Here is Francis Fukuyama giving gracious words about James Q Wilson, a towering US political scientist who recently died. I was pleased to see him take up some of the many ideas which featured in one of Professor Wilson’s many masterworks, Bureaucracy, which I urge you to buy if you […]
Stop what you’re doing. Read this, a powerful argument by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry for spreading risk intelligently by turning banks into partnerships and pursuing massive (by which he means MASSIVE) deregulation at the same time. One smart, challenging paragraph after another: Let’s work through the main objections to the partnership model: It’s antiquated. You […]
As Russians vote in elections likely to return Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin as President, check out some Russian elections videos (h/t RFE/RL). First, one in which Apple products are used to show how hot modern Russian girls just lluuuurrrrvvvv Mr Putin: Or there’s this one in which a young […]
Here’s another truly horrible piece at Social Europe Journal that caught my beady eye. It’s by one Kinga Pozniak (someone of Polish origin no doubt, an anthropologist who lectures at the Western University in London. Not London, England. London, Canada). It’s entitled "Poland’s ACTA Protests – Molecular Change in an unlikely […]
My piece over at Telegraph Blogs about language teaching and learning in UK schools has attracted 226 comments so far. First, an apology to Will Hutton. My piece said that Hutton’s Guardian article on this subject did not make clear that learning languages is hard work. Openmind2010 points out that […]
One of the themes of this website is how our institutions and beliefs of all shapes and sizes are struggling to cope with the way new technology creates complexity at ever-soaring rates. In other words, the faster our machines the faster they can do things and generate information, which in turn […]
A reader sent me this email message on New Year’s Eve: I just wanted to say how much I’ve enjoyed reading your sane and authoritative commentaries over the last year. "Spark of hope" indeed! More power to you! What a kind thought. Sane. Authoritative. Hopeful. Powerful. Yup – that’s this website! […]
We cherish the idea that we clever Westerners have something called ‘freedom of the press’. But what exactly does that expression mean? Does it mean that those who constitute the body of publishing folk who define themselves as ‘the press’ have special status and associated freedoms which may or may […]
Here is my latest article at DIPLOMAT magazine on the ever-fascinating question of diplomatic and wider media technique in a confusing new world: Once upon a time diplomats were rarely seen or heard in public. To do their vital work of privately communicating messages between national leaders they needed to […]
Despite my wretched ankle accident in Nizhny Novgorod, my interest in things Russian is reanimated. Part of the fascination with Russia lies in the baffling issue of how in fact a society moves from rigid oppressive stupidity to something far more flexible, democratic and smart. When the USSR broke up, […]
