“As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it”. (Buddy Hackett) How often have you heard little children whining, “I don’t like “bits” in orange juice”, or “I don’t like cabbage/onions/ blueberries” etc. etc? Fill in the blanks. Ad infinitum. I know one person who apparently ate only Heinz …
Israel has been caught carrying out aggressive espionage operations against American targets for decades, according to U.S. intelligence officials and congressional sources. And they still do it. They just don’t get arrested very often. As Newsweek recently reported, American counter-intelligence officials told members of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees at the end of …
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Can-do, hard work, dedication are the cornerstones of the America myth of success. There is much hand-wringing about the decline of social mobility. But recent studies show that, the situation has not become worse in the last 30 or forty years. In fact, US social mobility has been relatively stable, and more rigid, than most …
Continue reading ‘Social mobility: the myth and the facts’ »
Last year the Russian tenants in the London apartment beneath us decamped without paying a single bill. For weeks we were returning invoices “gone away”. These people were working for a Russian billionaire with a mansion in Notting Hill. Britain now has 104 billionaires (up from 88 last year), according to The Sunday Times, and …
A subscriber to the Georgetown Forum, a Washington DC website, is offering “Toddler Conversion” kits. The editor of this blog is not entirely sure how these work, but he is nonetheless hailing this invention as one of the greatest breakthroughs in the last two hundred years. The idea has to be this: in minutes you …
