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Iran-Drumbeat Watch: 'A Scary Club of Warmongers'
Last week I mentioned Mike Lofgren's observations on the strange media-political history of the "Iran threat." The world is full of, ummm, imperfectly governed states, at least two of which actually...
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Interesting Compendium of Obama Administration Bests and Worsts
We all know the limits of online "polls." There's no random sampling, zealots can skew the results, and so on.But the poll of most- and least-favorite achievements of the Obama administration that has...
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The Mysteries of Barack Obama: Cervical-Thoracic Edition
Here's one good reason to Subscribe!â„¢: it keeps us in business. Another: for our current issue, which really is good*, many subscribers got their in-the-mail issues a few days before the magazine went...
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How Would Jeremy Lin Fare in a Pickup Game in Beijing?
A 20-something American now working as a translator in China sends this report:Having lived in Beijing for five years now, I've played in more than my share of Chinese pickup games. Something that...
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Update on Lin, 'Jewish Dominance' of Hoops, and Ethnic Traits in Athletics...
Following this item earlier tonight about the ethnic element in Jeremy Lin's athletic skills, and emphasizing that what follows is explicitly not related to Robert Wright's original post on the topic,...
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Jeremy Lin's Secret? It's Not That He's Asian
Once again I am on the road and off the Internet, so let me be the last person on Earth to weigh in about Jeremy Lin. I'll do so by disagreeing totally with my longtime friend and recent colleague...
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Adventures in Translation, Part 2,148
Everyone's favorite illustration of the perils of computerized (mis)translation has been the scene at right, from a restaurant in China in the mid-2000s.Below we have a new candidate, courtesy of a...
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The Great James Rowe Memo
There is enough self-referential content to this post to justify the apposite Escher illustration. But not enough to keep me from doing it at all!My friend Timothy Noah has an excellent item at TNR...
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Science Speaks on the Crucial Canned Beer Question!
In response to previous installments one and two, an Actual Scientist writes to set us straight about what really happens to precious droplets of beer when they are housed in amber-colored glass...
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It Appears That I Was Very, Very Wrong About Canned Beer
A week ago I confessed my bias against beer that came out of cans, rather than from a tap or one of the brown glass bottles that have come to be associated with America's craft-brew renaissance....
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'State of the WaPo' Watch: Two Articles Worth Reading
I assume it was by serendipity rather than design that both the New York Times and the Washington Post had bracing articles today on the way the way the Post is being forced to, or is deciding to,...
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Super-Cool Obama, Super-Hot Christie, and a Book by Harper Lee
Following my cover story in the current issue, and this message from an African-American professional woman, Nancy Wallace, about the Jackie Robinson-like pressure on Obama not to "let down his race,"...
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Super-Cool Obama and the Spectre of the Angry Black Man
I'll start posting some of the reactions I've gotten to my current cover story that tries to make sense of President Obama's successes and failures in his first three years in office. Not many people...
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Today's 'Even Aerospace Engineers Have a Sense of Humor' Entry
Check out Flight Aware's track of the route of the Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group's flight 236 yesterday. This is the route the plane actually took, as logged by Air Traffic Control radar. Look at it...
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Obama Story Is Online
Much of this past fall I was interviewing political figures to get their judgments on what-we-know, and how-we-know it, about President Obama's successes and failures in office so far. The results are...
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Incredibly Close and Loud, Caribbean Dept
Everyone has heard about the airport at St. Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, where planes come in right over vacationers' heads on the beach.I was always sort of skeptical that it could work the...
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Turn to Me (Yes, Me) for Your Fashion Tips
Last year I revealed the secret to affordable stylishness when it came to personal accessories. That secret was: the Timex Easy-Reader Indiglo watch, which costs somewhere between $25 and $40 depending...
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Chronicles of a Paranoid Nation: The Deciduous-Infrastructure Factor
(Please see updates below.) David Hobby, the photographer who runs the popular Strobist site and photostream, has a sobering account today of how he got in trouble with the police for taking this...
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On Explaining Obama
It's time to dig into the mailbag of responses about my current article on Barack Obama's strengths and weaknesses.On the theory of Obama's "cold" personality, a reader in California writes:For better...
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Clash of the Titans! Airport-Security Culture vs. Brazilian Carnival Culture
Two powerful forces. When they collide, which will prevail?As it turns out, it's no contest. A reader writes about what played out at this year's Carnaval:This video touches on two of your themes:...
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