In the dismaying-but-not-surprising category of news stories recently, this one in the July 2 New York Times got my attention. It describes how the Obama administration is killing off the summer internship programs, many of them unpaid, that are so popular with high school seniors and college students. Sample quotes: One reason this got my... Read More

The first federal regulator I ever knew was a fellow named Ernie. This was 40 years ago, a few weeks after I'd first landed on these shores. I'd run out of money and taken work as kitchen help at a small family firm in New Rochelle, New York. The firm made frozen kosher TV dinners.... Read More

Is China really a modern country? Can China be a modern country? Paul Midler's book leaves you wondering. After studying Chinese at college, Midler lived and worked in China through the 1990s before returning to the U.S.A. to take a business degree. In 2001 he went back to China, setting himself up as a consultant... Read More

Everybody should see a ghost town. I saw one the year before last, visiting Montana. That was Garnet ghost town in the Rockies, thirty miles east of Missoula. Ghost towns are melancholy places, of course. There's a visitor center in Garnet with photographs of the people who once lived there. It seems to have been... Read More

My 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica lists 152 countries in the world. Question: How many of those countries made it from 1911 to today, nearly a century later, with their systems of government and law intact (allowing for minor constitutional adjustments like expansion of the franchise), without having suffered revolution, civil war, major dismemberment, or foreign occupation?... Read More

Who wants to be a millionaire? Well, I have no principled objections. And now I find that in fact, yes! — I am a millionaire, or at least, one half of a millionaire couple. My house — a modest three-bedroom colonial, eighty years old, on a sixth of an acre — is worth, in realtor's... Read More

A trillion dollars! Actually, the phrase that came into my mind on reading that was: "Only a trillion?" Not because of any wish that the CBO had been more generous in the upgrade of their forecast, but because Only a Trillion was the title of a book by the late Isaac Asimov, one of those... Read More

I know how the poet felt. This past few days I've been pondering economics, which Thomas Carlyle famously described as "the dismal science." My pondering has been assisted by friends, readers, and colleagues, who have been trying to educate me in economic principles. I can't say I am no wiser than when I started, but... Read More

As parents, Mr & Mrs Derb rely to a certain degree — no more than we can help, and let the parent who is without sin cast the first stone — on bribery and threats to keep our kids in line. We don't usually think of our parenting techniques in those terms, of course; more... Read More

Reader, I have been vouchsafed a revelation, a sudden flash of understanding, a satori, a glimpse of the inner workings of the universe, of the waters that are under the earth, of the hidden tissues that connect aspects of reality not normally thought of as being related to each other in any way at all.... Read More

A friend of mine who is an actor tells me that when two actors encounter each other in the street, their usual salutation is not: "Good morning!" or "How ya doin'?" It is much more likely to be: "Are you working?" The rest of us had better start getting into that showbiz mentality. Ladies and... Read More

Today, May 15th, is voting day in my school district, when we approve tax and budget increases for the coming school year. My local school board is looking to raise taxes nearly 8 per cent, citing inflation, slightly increased enrolments, and some new unfunded mandates from the state. So I get to think about education;... Read More

Reading Fernand Braudel's The Wheels of Commerce recently, I was struck by how oddly dated its many, many references to "capitalism" now seem. I don't mean to be unfair to M. Braudel: the subtitle of his book (published in 1979) is, after all,Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, and he is striving to describe and explain... Read More