According to the business plan of the 10,000 Women project, an investment of $100 million over five years will create 10,000 female entrepreneurs in the developing world. The money goes to business education – MBAs – for women in the global south who, in turn, are expected to create businesses that employ people and grow… Continue reading The Talented Tenth
In this age of Amazon recommendations and Kindle downloads, I still rely on the old-fashioned services of a book buyer. My personal book buyer has an uncanny ability to anticipate my tastes. He has introduced me to out-of-print novelists, obscure playwrights and classic philosophy tracts. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of his choices, though quite a… Continue reading My Backlogged Pages, New York Times
The future is no longer in plastics, as the businessman in the 1967 film The Graduate insisted. Rather, the future is in China. If a multinational corporation doesn’t shoehorn China into its business plan, it courts the ridicule of its peers and the outrage of its shareholders. The language of choice for ambitious undergraduates is Mandarin. Apocalyptic… Continue reading Pax Ottomanica
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has been going back and forth on the Okinawa base issue. As a candidate he pledged to close the Futenma air base and not relocate any of its personnel within Okinawa prefecture. But then, after Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan won the elections last year, the U.S. pressure campaign began.… Continue reading Okinawa and Obama’s Base Addiction
Last year, Lauren Rosenberg was walking across a four-lane highway in Utah when she was hit by a car. Now she’s suing Google for $100,000 in damages because Google Maps told her to take that route. The lawsuit is patently absurd. If she had come to an edge of a cliff that Google Maps said… Continue reading Blaming Turkey
The full-page ads in The Washington Post seem so reasonable. The military contractor Pratt & Whitney has been arguing that America doesn’t need to spend $485 million to develop a second engine for the F-35 jet fighter. It’s a compelling argument. We’re in a serious economic crisis, so why on earth would we build another… Continue reading The Trillion-Dollar Question
Kim Jong Il must work for the American Enterprise Institute. Or maybe it’s the Heritage Foundation. The North Korean dictator doesn’t talk much about his non-resident fellowship at a right-wing U.S. think tank. It might not go over well with the Politburo in Pyongyang. But actions speak louder than words. North Korea’s sinking of the… Continue reading Kim Jong-Il: Right-Wing Mole?
“I need a little space.” When lovers utter these words, it’s usually a bad sign for the relationship. They feel suffocated. They’re reexamining their commitment. They’re checking out other options. But they don’t have the courage to make a clean break. Britain is the latest country to question its “special relationship” with the United States.… Continue reading The Break-Up
The bubble is bursting. I’m not talking about the Greek economy, the collapse of which has bankers and finance ministers trembling from Athens to Antarctica. Nor am I talking about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which reminds us once again that our current energy security rests on shaky foundations. I’m talking about… Continue reading Terrorism in a Teacup
North Korea and Israel have a lot in common. Neither is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and both employ their nuclear weapons in elaborate games of peek-a-boo with the international community. Israel and North Korea are equally paranoid about outsiders conspiring to destroy their states, and this paranoia isn’t without some justification.… Continue reading The Israeli Exception