Life of Alan

Hopes for a Midwest peace accord were dealt a severe blow Monday, when a bomb ripped through a toll booth on the I-90 Illinois Tollway. The attack, which killed six and delayed westbound traffic for hours, is believed to be the work of Iowa-based militant Lutheran extremists.

(tags: Illinois)

At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is Massachusetts, and the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy. If the Obama…

(tags: Education)

Islam is “Russia’s fate.” This was the prediction made a few years ago by Aleksei Malashenko, one of Russia’s leading (and most reliable) experts on Islam. This may be an exaggeration, but perhaps not by much. Demography is also Russia’s fate; if the situation and the prospects were less critical, Islam would be less of a threat. With equal justice it could be said that Russia’s historical misfortune (and fate) are its obsession with imaginary dangers and neglect of real ones. Stalin, it will be recalled, trusted no one, especially not old Bolsheviks, but he was certain that Hitler would not attack the Soviet Union. It is a fascinating syndrome, and one that has again become crucial with the reemergence of Russia as an important player in world politics. And an important player it is. It took Germany a mere fifteen years after defeat in the First World War to reappear as a major power on the global scene. It took Russia about the same time to reemerge after the breakdown of the…

(tags: Russian_History)

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(tags: Toronto)

A few years ago the Genealogical Office in Dublin moved from a back room of the Heraldic Museum up the street to the National Library. The old office wasn't big enough for all the people stopping by to track down their Irish ancestors, and even the new, much larger office is often crowded. Because of its history of oppression and Catholic fecundity, Ireland has been a remarkably productive exporter of people. The population of the island has never exceeded 10 million, but more than 70 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry. On warm summer days, as tourists throng nearby Trinity College and Dublin Castle, the line of visitors waiting to consult one of the office's professional genealogists can stretch out the door. I suspect that many people have had a fling with genealogy somewhat like mine. In my office I have a file containing the scattered lines of Olsons and Taylors, Richmans and Sigginses (my Irish ancestors), that I gathered several years ago in a paroxysm of family…

(tags: Genealogy)

(tags: NoCal SoCal Texas)

Ok, maybe not every country, but with at least 12 different sockets in widespread use it sure as hell feels like it to anyone who's ever traveled. So why in the world, literally, are there so many? Funny story! The more you look at the writhing orgy of plugs in the world, the sillier it seems. If you buy a phone charger at the airport in Florida, you won't be able to use it when your flight lands in France. If you buy a three-pronged adapter for le portable in Paris, you might not be able to plug it in when your train drops you off in Germany. And when your flight finally bounces to a stop on the runway in London, get ready to buy a comically large adapter to tap into the grid there. But that's cool! You can take the same adapter to Singapore with you! And parts of Nigeria! Oh yeah, and if said charger doesn't support 240v power natively, make sure you buy a converter, or else it might explode. And aside from a few oases, like the fledgling standardization of the Type C Europlug…

(tags: International)

(tags: Movies Star_Wars Lord_of_the_Rings)

Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.

(tags: New_Orleans)

Until last September, the global economic slump was expected to take a fairly limited toll on the Mexican economy. There was even talk of decoupling—that, for once, a U.S. recession would leave Mexico relatively unscathed. Over the past few months, however, this optimism has been replaced by increasingly dire predictions for the country’s near-term economic outlook.

This deterioration is hardly surprising. The global crisis intensified markedly in September 2008, and the true magnitude of the slowdown began to emerge. World trade flows dried up, which is particularly damaging for nations like Mexico whose economic activity depends critically on exports. At the same time, international financial uncertainty led investors to withdraw capital from emerging markets.

As if that weren’t enough, Mexico was confronted with a number of idiosyncratic shocks: a crackdown on drug cartels and local corruption, a flu epidemic and trade disputes with its most important partner.

(tags: Mexico)