Savior
Meg Whitman Jolts HP As Its Reluctant Savior by George Anders. To understand Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief executive who now runs Hewlett-Packard, it’s essential to revisit something she did 26 years ago. She had just become a junior [...]
Higher Ed
Washington Monthly reviews Higher Education in the Digital Age by William G. Bowen.
Radical
Nicholas Lemann reviews Radical: Fighting to Put Students First by Michelle Rhee. You can browse inside the book here.
Trend
All the Lonely People by Ross Douthat. Over the last decade, the United States has become a less violent country in every way save one. As Americans commit fewer and fewer crimes against other people’s lives and property, they have [...]
Hydraulic Fracturing
The latest issue of Case Western Reserve Law Review, a symposium entitled: The Law and Policy of Hydraulic Fracturing: Addressing the Issues of the Natural Gas Boom, is available online for free here. (pdf)
Sexy?
Is Sex Still Sexy? by Emily Esfahani Smith. If you want to get a sense of how college students approach sex, the play Speak About It is a pretty good place to start. It’s a series of skits written by [...]
MOOC
Laptop U by Nathan Heller. Gregory Nagy, a professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, is a gentle academic of the sort who, asked about the future, will begin speaking of Homer and the battles of the distant past. At [...]
Gap?
Bring Back the Generation Gap! by Peter Hyman. The onset of middle age used to mean that one could ease into becoming a bland old fusspot, free from the burden of remaining attuned to the microscopic upticks of the cultural [...]
Dallas Willard
Dallas Willard, a Man from Another ‘Time Zone’ by John Ortberg. When Dallas Willard was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late summer of 2012, one of his reflections was: “I think that, when I die, it might be some time [...]
Exactly
No, I Do Not Want to Pet Your Dog by Farhad Manjoo. They’re lounging in our offices and licking us at our cafés. It’s time to take America back. More at Slate.
Quest
Reason reviews The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling by Jal Mehta,
Future
The Singularity of Fools by David Rieff. A special report from the utopian future. Read more at FP.
Fails
Why American Education Fails by Jal Mehta. In his landmark 1973 book, The Coming of Post-industrial Society, the sociologist Daniel Bell heralded the United States’ transition from a labor-intensive economy that produced goods to a knowledge-based one geared toward providing [...]
A Life
Paul Johnson reviews ‘C.S. Lewis: A Life’ by Alister McGrath. But the fact is, Lewis was a genius. I was never in any doubt about that. The first grown-up book I read voluntarily, when I was 14, was A Preface [...]
Big Data
The Rise of Big Data by Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger. Everyone knows that the Internet has changed how businesses operate, governments function, and people live. But a new, less visible technological trend is just as transformative: “big data.” [...]
Posts
Due to various projects I am working on, blog postings will be lighter than normal for the next few weeks. Also, if more and more content becomes “premium” (i.e. charged for), than it could put an end to this blog, [...]
Complex
Terrorism Triangle in Boston by Jennifer S. Bryson. Causes of terrorism: “It’s religion!” “It’s mental illness!” “It’s political grievances!” Or, “It’s America!” In the words of Ramzan Kadyrov, Head of the Chechen Republic, commenting on the two Chechens suspected of [...]
Decline
The Decline of Terrorism by Steve Chapman. Our era is known as the Age of Terror, and no wonder. Twelve years ago, the United States suffered its worst terrorist attack ever, and since then, we have lived under the shadow [...]
Ph.D.?
Should You Get a Ph.D.? by Daniel Drezner. For you, the possible entrants into Ph.D. programs in international studies, it is the best of times and the worst of times. Obviously, it’s the best of times because some program somewhere [...]
Fall
The Fall of the House of Mondavi by Robert F. Howe. “Take it back,” snapped Robert Mondavi, his pulse quickening with rage. What had been a festive family celebration that day in November 1965 got eerily still. Robert and his [...]