Blog

It was nearly 4:00 a.m. and the English soccer fan standing next to me at the Coffee Shop in Union Square knew the final score, even though ten minutes or so remained in the World Cup match between Brazil and England, which Brazil was leading 2-1. “England always break your heart,” she ...  (Read more)

A fantastic soccer match is underway between South Korea and Italy. The score is tied 1-1, the second half of overtime is about to begin; Italy just lost a player to a red card on a horrible call by the referee. World Cup at its best. Watch it if you can.

UPDATE: South Korea wins 2-1. Amazing.

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)