Earlier this week, the British government released data showing that the royal family costs each taxpayer just 61 pence ($1.12) per year. This was down £100,000 from last year, and is almost 60% less than the cost in 1991-92.Apparently, Princess Di had expensive tastes. The chief British government accountant put recent thrift in perspective for Reuters:"We believe this represents a value-for-money monarchy," said Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy...

Found in the May 26, 2005 personals section of the New York Review of Books:WOMAN would like to meet men born in 1940, preferably on November 9 or 10.The word "preferably" causes problems, I think, for the obvious hypotheses.

Well, the news is a flutter with talk of a new "Asian Invasion". The Chinese state-owned CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) has made an unsolicitated offer for the US-based UNOCAL which trumps the current offer by Chevron. This bid follows hot on the heals of the acquisition of IBM's perosnal computer arm by the Lenova Group as well as another bid for an American company, this time Maytag, by the China-based Haier. One cannot help...

By now you all probably know that Ahmadinejad handily won the election in Iran:Ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to a landslide win in presidential elections on Saturday, spelling a possible end to Iran's fragile social reforms and tentative rapprochement with the West.Ahmadinejad, 48, received the backing of the religious poor to defeat moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was supported by pro-reform parties...

I'm tied up with an article I have under "revise-and-resubmit"; the other members of the Duck are similarly preoccupied. We'll all be posting again shortly. Patrick, for example, has promised a post on American exceptionalism that will provide some perspective on the debate kicked off the Trumanites. He's something of an expert on the subject, so it should be worth the wait. 'Nuff said

To get a reputation for being suspicious and distrustful is certainly not desirable. Nevertheless, men are so false, so insidious, so deceitful and cunning in their wiles, so avid in their own interest, and so oblivious to other's interests, that you cannot go wrong if you believe little and trust less (Series C, 81).Renaissance Italy certainly must have been a fun place, eh?Filed as: Guicciardini and maxims

"Speak Victorian, think Pagan." Kaplan's clever phrase is also the motto of Coming Anarchy. I wonder, though, if Curzon takes that maxim as seriously as he should.In his June 20 post, "Thanks for Nothing", Curzon writes:Thanks all of you who pushed for the US to break with Uzbekistan after the Andijan massacre that left hundreds dead. You got what you wanted! Uzbekistan has now imposed flight restrictions on our "K2" airbase, all while saying...

Robert Farley's posted the first of a six-part series on the future of Sino-US relations. If the quality of the first post is any indication, the whole series will be an excellent primer on the debate, as well as a terrific analysis of the key issues at stake. My only concern so far is that Robert may be relying too much on "straight-line" projections: in taking current trends and extrapolating them into the future.For example, Robert is...

I guess that's what I get for waiting until everyone else has already posted. Ok, so I need to comply with the “five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult” meme. After reading some other folks’ lists I am a little weary about posting mine, since I didn’t do all that much reading as a child (my teachers are still shocked that I am pursuing my PhD, as are many of those who ‘knew me when’—lets just say I wasn’t...

Listing beloved books from my adolescence is so much more enjoyable than prepping for class…Also, I'm choosing to interpret the meme quite strictly, as asking for fictional books read as an adolescent (middle school/high school) that I felt were good enough to read again later on (college or later). This isn't a list of the books I read that had the most impact on me; that list is here. And this is not an exhaustive list; I recently re-read...

Yesterday, Dan "tagged" me and the other bloggers at the Duck to participate in one of those circulating book threads (or "memes"). I am now supposed "to describe the 'five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult.'"Hmmmm. This is tough.First, I'm older than the other guys and have thus had more time to re-read more books that I read as a teen/young adult. Theoretically, my list could be very long.Second, and this is...

Not that long ago I questioned whether David was giving realism a fair shake. Recently, David shared an email on his blog that does the work I should have done:First off, the notion that a nuclear Iraq would be problematic but not inherently disastrous isn’t some bizarre notion – the fairly-insane regimes of Stalin and Mao proved manageable even once they got nuclear weapons. The same arguments made in favor of stopping a nuclear Iraq were also...