I began buying the New York Times regularly in 1956 at Fletcher’s on the Square in Bellows Falls Vermont when I started high school. The Times had always been around the house because my father subscribed to it off and on and I must have developed the habit of reading it regularly by ’56. Nothing [...]

I bought an Asus eee PC yesterday. What is special about the Asus eee PC is the form factor. It is really small. I have read umpteen reviews, many with good pictures showing the size – but it didn’t prepare me for how small it was when I saw it. Here it is with several [...]

I was recently happily surprised to see a US presidential candidate – any candidate would do – show an awareness of the nature of the new media environment created by the Internet and in particular its darker side. I ran into this exchange near the end of this Pajamas Media interview of John McCain by [...]

As someone who follows the war in Iraq closely it has surprised me that the Democratic candidates are still very negative about the surge and still refuse to acknowledge the progress General Petraeus has made even when put on the spot during the New Hampshire debates. It is unremarkable that pro Republican sites have been [...]

To me one indication that the Obama phenomena is real is the simultaneous success of Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is a much less well known and a less attractive candidate on the issues to conservatives than Obama is to liberals. Huck seems to be a big government Republican – which also describes the present occupant of [...]

Peter Magnusson is engaged in a project to try to pin down Quality on the Web. He points to the crux of the matter thus: “on the Internet, everybody can see if you’re an idiot, they just can’t do much about it.” He does not disclose exactly what he is trying to do about it [...]

In a recent post on the Iraqi Shiites I discussed Reuel Marc Gerecht’s Why the Worst is Probably Over in Iraq which takes the view that the moderate Shiite support for democracy led by Grand Ayatollah Sistani had survived the civil war. In the course of looking more deeply into Gerecht’s his work I found [...]

In a move expected since last year Venezuela has ‘revalued’ the bolivar by a factor of 1000. The Reuters news story opens: CARACAS, Jan 1 (Reuters) – Venezuela opened the New Year on Tuesday by revamping its bolivar currency in an effort by the government of President Hugo Chavez to tackle the highest inflation in [...]

I went to high school in the small Vermont town of Bellows Falls – there were just under 100 in our graduating class of 1960. Once an bustling railroad and paper town on the Connecticut river the town has only gotten sleepier since my time there. The last time I went through on the train [...]

I just finished David Bellavia’s House to House, an infantry Sargent’s account of the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004. In personal terms it is about one man’s struggle to come to terms with his own shortcomings as a soldier and even as a father and husband. In military terms it is a detailed [...]