Category: Blog

Modafinil is a little-known drug that staves off sleep without the side effects of amphetamines; it may join Prozac and Viagra in the lineup of pharmacological adjustments to the modern life. As The Washington Post ...  (Read more)

Kamran Khan, who is the Washington Post‘s correspondent in Karachi, was in the U.S. consulate when a car bomb exploded outside it yesterday, killing 10 Pakistanis. His first-person story in today’s ...  (Read more)

Flashy events grab our attention, or at least the media’s attention; terrorist bombs, nuclear threats, elections, political scandals, etc. Yet the events of greatest import, in terms of the change they cause, often have no flash and hardly draw our notice. What was the most significant event ...  (Read more)

The collapse of communist East Germany began, informally speaking, when thousands of East Germans sought asylum at the West German embassies in Budapest and Prague in 1989. That was the East German regime’s emperor-has-no-clothes moment, and five months later the Berlin Wall was opened. Is the ...  (Read more)

Two ironic novels, related to America and Eastern Europe, that I hope to read one day soon:

Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, by Gary Shteyngart.

Headline in today’s Washington Post: Despite Sept. 11, Interest Still Low In Foreign News.

Michael Buerk, an anchor for the BBC evening news, has announced his retirement. As the Guardian notes, “Buerk became a household name presenting the Nine O’Clock News, a job he split with Peter Sissons. He made ...  (Read more)

Anyone reading this would not want to live in Afghanistan–you can pretty much forget about accessing the Web unless you’ve got a satellite phone–but a lot of people are heading there, and I don’t mean the aid workers and diplomats who are raising Kabul’s real-estate prices ...  (Read more)

Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the spiritual leader of Hizbollah, is believed to have issued the fatwa that encouraged suicide terrorists to detonate truck bombs outside the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. But as David ...  (Read more)

It’s hard to imagine that America beating Portugal at anything would be newsworthy, but the American team’s 3-2 victory over Portugal in their World Cup match today is amazing; it’s the most significant U.S. soccer ...  (Read more)