Non-Islamic Man-Caused Disasters I've been hearing about the U.S. government's rebuffing offers of foreign help to clean up the Gulf...

Apparently, What They Need at the U.N. Is Softer Blankies I've never been much of a negotiator -- probably that empathy thing you're...

Get out the Vote I don't know about you guys, but this video doesn't just make me want to vote. It makes me want to crawl over brok...

Plutarch. I chose Nicias and Crassus as a follow up to Alcibades and Coriolanus because of the connection, as Nicias was general in Alcibade...

Signs: She sounds as if she may be expressing disappointment with the President. Obviously, he needs to fire and replace her in order to de...

Now You Know How Bacteria Feel When you take an antibiotic, you expect it to kill your infection without hurting you. Lots of antibiotics t...

Two From Arts & Letters Daily: A piece on stoicism , which contrasts it to the products being generated by our own age: Ours is not a ph...

Seems Like I've Heard This Before: An interview with Peter S. Kaufman , the President of investment bank Gordian Group and head of the f...

The Correct Answer is "Both": A strange poll question will get you unreliable results. Nearly half of American Adults see the gov...

Plutarch: Don't forget, we are to read Nicias and Crassus, plus the comparison , for this weekend. Eric will lead the discussion, I be...

Taking the Fifth: I was looking at the Kagan email archives , which are an interesting project, when I was surprised to see the subject head...

A Blindness in the Brain: There is a tremendously interesting series being written on "unknown unknowns" starting here . As of th...

Now, Turning to Reason, & Its Just Sweetness Iain M. Banks is the Scottish author of a series of science fiction novels about “The Cultu...

The Zombie Menace: At ForeignPolicy magazine.

The Lebanese Club: An interesting article on Baghdad nightlife . It wasn't that long ago that there wasn't any -- except on dust-ri...

Now There's Something You Don't See Everyday: This piece on McChrystal is extremely good journalism -- you have to respect the repo...

A Great Pie: Friday we had pot roast (pork); Saturday I made pizza dough for homemade pizzas. Last night was chicken and potatoes. Today, ...

Free Speech as Political Patronage: Via Dad29, an exception is being made: ...restrictions on companies that received government bailouts d...

The Border Issue: Will Senator Kyl stand by this claim , I wonder? It's a remarkable claim to make, and he has to know that the Presiden...

Testimonies In 1952 the little-known brief novel “Testimonies” appeared in print. The author was Patrick O’Brian, who later would achieve c...