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I must have been on drugs: I haven’t mentioned the brilliant and exquisite Virginia Postrel in some time. I have been a fool. Virginia has a terrific column in the NY Times on the history of information: Indeed, a new book argues, to understand why the West not only grew …

John Fogde came up with a very nice list of Christmas songs he can still listen to, Bill Sherman, Jen Raj, and I added some faves. I forgot to add this one, which at one point I was burnt out on, but after a several year respite I find I …

I just received an interesting email that proclaimed me a “reactionary hawk.” This gave me pause for in fact I am a chastened liberal, and I am not hawkish in general, just now. I was against war in Vietnam and was generally wary of intervention until the first Gulf War, …

I guess in some areas I am naive, which given all I’ve seen and done over the years from Seoul to Tangiers strikes me as hardly possible. But I am utterly clueless regarding child pornography and pedophilia in general: I truly don’t get it. I don’t get why this would …

Tomorrow, December 6, starting at 6 PM ET, Santa Claus will commune with the masses via a cybercast: Santa Claus had agreed to host the 3rd Annual live “Streaming Santa” video webcast with special “webcapting™” technology to offer captioned video streaming for the disabled. The holiday event, scheduled for Friday, …

As an Olympic buff, this is reason alone for regime change: A human rights group formally demanded that the IOC expel Iraq’s national Olympic committee because its chief – Saddam Hussein’s eldest son Uday – tortured and jailed athletes who failed to please him. Indict, which is based in London, …

Not surprisingly, the new Pew Global Attitudes Project results released yesterday show support for the US falling in Islamic countries: The most serious problem facing the U.S. abroad is its very poor public image in the Muslim world, especially in the Middle East/Conflict Area. Favorable ratings are down sharply in …

Matt Welch lookalike Ben Affleck seems like such a nice guy. But the tea leaves portend nothing but trouble and heartbreak: Friends of Jennifer Lopez are concerned following Affleck’s $500,000 Las Vegas shopping spree over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was after a weekend of gambling in Vegas that Affleck checked …

While South Korea is racing ahead, price is holding down broadband penetration here, according to Simon Romero in the NY Times: Only about 15 percent of American households currently subscribe to broadband service – or fast Internet access – despite the fact that 70 percent of households have the technical …

Those who defend Islam as a religion of peace dissemble and have their heads in the sand (so to speak). Those who claim Islam is rotten to the core and needs to be gutted and refuted wholesale are also wrong and guilty of selective vision. American-Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi, …