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'Best Book' Fiesta
I generally dread year-end lists of anything, but the worthiness of the book business makes me happy to pitch in on "best book of the year" compendia. In my enthusiasm, I've contributed to three such...
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Wikileaks
The ongoing Wikileaks phenomenon includes so many elements that are obviously good, so many that are obviously bad, and so many that simply are, as huge-scale technological forces of nature, that I am...
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Press Notes: On 'Virtually Speaking' Tonight with Jay Rosen
For the record: tonight at 9pm Eastern I'll be doing a Second Life "Virtually Speaking" show, hosted by Jay Ackroyd, with Jay Rosen of Pressthink and NYU's journalism school. Topic: what the hell has...
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Liu Xiaobo and the Nobel Peace Prize
Tomorrow is the day when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. (Has it only been one year since Barack Obama received the prize and made his surprising speech? It seems like decades.)Obviously it...
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America Underestimates - and Misunderstands - Its Economic Strengths
The brief column below appears in the December 11 issue of a National Journal supplement on The Next Economy, which includes a variety of articles on the longer-term challenges to U.S. economic...
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An Unfortunate Decision by Peter Orszag
Last night, on the "Virtually Speaking" discussion about the media with Jay Rosen of NYU, we talked about the phenomenon of things that everyone in the press corp "knows" but that don't make their way...
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A McCain Festschrift, Featuring Sarah Palin
As the chances for an up-or-down Senate vote on the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy dwindle, here is a collection of reader messages about John McCain, who became the most visible face of Republican...
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The Kind of Thing I Miss About China
Yes, I know, you could have a "serious" reaction on several levels to the news clip below. But as soon as I saw it I burst out laughing and thought, "That's what I miss!" When living in China I would...
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'Splitting Like a Girl'
It has been a dismal day in the eastern half of the country. So in the spirit of bracing activities to make the most of cold weather, here is a report on the right way to split firewood, especially if...
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Good News for The Atlantic
The NY Times this morning has a nice story about a more-than-nice development for our magazine: significant profits for The Atlantic in 2010, a year that has been very tough for journalism as a...
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For Those of You Hungry for Pomplamoose News
Here is a trifecta. It is a news nugget that (a) features the blog-war - provoking indie duo, while (b) supporting a worthy Christmas-themed cause; and (c) offering yet another wrinkle on the endless...
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Richard Holbrooke
Over the next few days people will describe the achievements, the talents, and the outsized personality of Richard Holbrooke, who has just died after prolonged surgery for an aortic tear. I will try to...
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Happiness Abounds as Country Cheers
A friend in Shanghai writes to scold me for missing an obvious opportunity. When I reported yesterday the very welcome financial developments for our magazine, I used a blah headline to the effect of...
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I Don't Know if This Makes Me Feel Better or Worse (Panda Dept - UPDATED)
[See surprising UPDATE below!!] Chinese panda-caretakers at the reserve in Wolong (which I wrote about, just before it was heavily damaged in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008) are wearing panda suits to...
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OK, It Seems the Panda-Men Are Real
Yesterday I mentioned what I thought was an amusing but crude hoax: a story out of Chengdu about panda-handlers who dressed up as pandas to avoid spooking little cubs. Eg: Turns out, it's real. I have...
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Peter Orszag: The Shoe That Didn't Drop
I made a mistake several days ago when lamenting Peter Orszag's decision to take a senior job with Citibank, reportedly for several million dollars per year, so soon after leaving a senior Obama...
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Your One-Stop Aviation Reading List
1) I've frequently mentioned Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" column at Salon, which dependably adds an informed, common-sense, let's-cut-the-BS perspective on flying-related topics. For instance,...
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Military Veterans, on the Orszag Situation
I won't belabor this much longer, but there are several clean-up points to make after these two previous posts.1) Yesterday I "gently chided" Ezra Klein of the Washington Post for the Post's failure to...
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Asian Development Bank Meets the Smiley Curve
[See update at the bottom] Three years ago in "China Makes, the World Takes," I discussed the Irish-born China-based entrepreneur Liam Casey and his concept of the "smiley curve." This was the graph...
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Watch Out China Daily! The 'Pocket Airport' Threat
I've mentioned before two threats to the China Daily's position as my favorite newspaper. (From Global Times, and of course an ongoing challenge from the Onion.) Now here's another: Gizmag. As long as...
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