What does it take to make a nation great? What makes a country a great place to live, a healthy society, and a bastion of stability? Various theories and ideas have been put forward, and I think they are all pretty much bunk. I think we can apply a little reductionism here, and conclude that... Read More

Local headlines here in New York State recently have been dominated by corruption in the state legislature. The speaker of the lower house, the State Assembly, has had to resign his position after being arrested last month on federal corruption charges. The arrest was deeply unsurprising. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was known for years to... Read More

For anyone who sees the world from an East Asian standpoint, recent sex accusations against Britain’s Prince Andrew pack a special punch. Here we have Britain’s long-time Special Representative for International Trade and Investment accused of having sex with an underage girl. Although Andrew has consistently denied the allegations, already by 2011 he was sufficiently... Read More

Even well-informed Americans are unlikely to know much about the level of corruption prevalent within the member states of the European Union (EU). A fascinating article in the London Review of Books by UCLA professor Perry Anderson opens with a tour de force run-through of the high crimes and misdemeanors featuring recent heads of state... Read More

Post updated, 6/10/14. See below! As we saw previously (see My Most Read Posts), my post Maps of the American Nations is the single most popular post so far here on my blog. Americans all over are supremely interested in both their origins and the reasons for the cultural quirks of the different American regions.... Read More

Hope, our grandmothers told us, makes a good breakfast, but a poor supper. My guess is that where hope for convergence of the races in America is concerned, it’s around 6 p.m. on that schema. Not suppertime yet, but it’ll soon be getting dark. This gloomy thought was inspired by a couple of news stories.... Read More

After nearly two years, the shipwrecked Costa Concordia has finally been righted! [gigya src=" width="500" height="300" FlashVars="launch=53030510^290^134720&width=592&height=346" allowscriptaccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage=" "A testament to what engineering can do" indeed. Make no mistake, we mean American (and others of Northern European – including likely Northern Italian) engineering: [gigya src=" width="500" height="300" FlashVars="launch=53019092^240^154290&width=592&height=346" allowscriptaccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent"... Read More

Yup, it's still there: Just sayin'

(Courtesy Geoffery Miller) This is the perceived level of corruption, by nation, across the globe. The darker the country, the more corrupt it is perceived to be by its inhabitants. One cannot escape how the Northwestern European countries and countries founded by them stand out on this map. This was compiled by Transparency International, see... Read More

[Update: the girl shown in the photo is merely a random image; Chinese media reported she is a university student in Xiamen and she has nothing to do with Lei Zhengfu. My apologies. Further details on the Lei case here.] Alexa Olesen of Associated Press wrote a piece on the Lei Zhengfu sex tape. Fine... Read More