Clik here to view.
In Defense of Johnny Hallyday
A non-French reader now based in France has concluded that I am a Francophobe. Pas du tout! On opportunity-cost grounds, I may mildly regret the years I spent loading French, Latin, etc into my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Google-and-the-News: A Clash of World Views
A reader who works for a major news organization writes in skepticism about the arguments I quoted from many Google officials saying that of course people would end up paying for information on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Obama at West Point: I Like Ike
Because of travel and other complications, I have been away from the electronic world for several days. There is nothing like sitting in a traffic-jammed taxi or in seat 23E on the O'Hare or LaGuardia...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Obama and Ike: Readers Push Back
In response to this item yesterday, saying that Barack Obama's address at West Point was an intellectual descendant of Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell address in 1961, three themes of complaint....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Another Ike/Obama Issue: "Tarmac"
In introducing an item about Barack Obama's West Point speech (36 hours after delivery, still not posted at the White House site - but it should eventually be here), I mentioned that I had spent a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What "Monetization" Means to People Without Money
In a followup to my article about the emerging economics of the news in this month's Atlantic, I mention the cultural gulf that affects all such discussions of journalism's future. On one side are many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DADT and Ivy League ROTC
The impending deal to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars openly gay people from military service will be good for the military, good for the country, and good for national security. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Three About DADT, ROTC, and the Ivies
In response to this item, late last night, arguing that the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" could and should mean the end of ROTC's exclusion from a number of elite university campus, these...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Correction: No ROTC at Stanford
Earlier today I quoted a reader who said that Army ROTC had returned to Stanford. It turns out that that is not exactly so. Like Harvard, Stanford has an "off-campus" program. Students may be members...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Catching Up: Richard Blumenthal, Facebook
Because of travel and related chaos, have been behind the news on both these topics. But two recent Atlantic posts provide handy shortcuts to points I meant to make.Blumenthal: This story is simply...
View ArticleClik here to view.
If You're in Chicago This Evening
I will be interviewing Rick "Nixonland" Perlstein and Tom "Secret Lives of Citizens" Geoghegan, about the future of media and politics, at an event at the University of Chicago at 7pm on May 26th....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sad News from Shanghai: Gary Heyne
As soon as I arrived in Shanghai ten days ago on a short trip (about which more some time soon), I went directly to the establishment I had heard most about but not seen for myself. No, no, not the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
More on ROTC and the Ivy League
I won't pursue this indefinitely, but many interesting additions have come in on the question of whether Harvard, Yale, etc should/will/must bring back on-campus ROTC programs, now that the main stated...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stephen Banker
I am sorry to go on in commemorative fashion, but on the same day on which Gary Heyne died at the Boxing Cat Brewery in Shanghai, Stephen Banker died at his home in Washington. This is him a few years...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cutting Through the BS: Ambinder, Kinsley
Not that either of them needs a tout from me, but I wanted to mention two posts today by Atlantic colleagues that, in different ways, illustrate the real-time self-corrective potential of the modern...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Holiday Weekend Reading: "Living With A Computer" in 1982
I mentioned yesterday that I used to talk with my friend Steve Banker about the "exciting" new offerings of the nascent computer age. The Victor 9000, the KayPro, the Eagle, the Xerox Star, the TRS...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Weakening America: Mitch McConnell Shows How
Depressed about how hard it is to get first-rate people into federal jobs, so they're ready to handle emergencies like the BP oil disaster? Wondering if our systems of self-government really are up to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
It's Not Just the U.S. Educational System....
Late last year I was somewhat cross with the American public, wondering about our collapsing educational standards and sources of basic info, in light of the Pew study showing that 44 percent of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tech Updates
1) The cloud-based outliner, Thinklinkr, previously mentioned here and here, is out with a new free version, here. This has some limitations -- for instance, you can only use it while online, though...
View ArticleClik here to view.
I Love This Item So Very Much (Ancient Computing in China)
Ruan Yifeng, 阮一峰, an economist and IT guy in Shanghai, has used my 1982 article about the dawn of computing to do a thorough retrospective on the computer that was the star of my story, the...
View Article