The Hermit Crab Kingdom of North Korea opened up the airport to accept four hundred-odd Americans yesterday. The New York Philharmonic had been invited to town, part of the bizarre diplomatic game that we play with the leaders in the North. I can tell you precisely what they saw, since there are only so many […]

I had been prepared to let the rest of the election go without comment, but you know me better than that. This is too cool, and too spread across the globe. Everyone has an opinion, and everything matters. I don’t know when the caucus in Kenya is going to happen, anymore than I understand how […]

Jack in 1948 The days are getting longer, and the world beneath our feet is responding to the added measure of photons, regardless of the dreary chill. There was an early meeting on Saturday over in close-in Maryland to focus some volunteer labor on a worthy cause. I rode with Jake, since Big Pink is […]

OK, I’ll admit it. I am bored. I have no idea how I am going to fill up the endless hours until November. Oh, the Chinese irritation about the successful satellite shoot-down is entertaining, but that is really a matter for the next President to deal with. The cause of my malaise is the fact […]

The ground is cold this morning, waiting. Well below freezing, bone cold, and thus the rain is turning immediately to ice. I am hoping for a snow day today, though that comes with peril. People will be stuck at home, with nothing to do except e-mail one another. One of our earnest entrepreneurs made an […]

SM-3 Leaving its Verticle Launch Tube The Notice to Airmen and Mariners- the NOTAM- is the key to this thing. Of course the decision-making that went into the operation has been going on for months. The issuance of the warning area is the last bit that provided us the operational location, the target and the […]

The back door to our new building looks out on the service drive between the Westin hotel, a fancy high-rise condo and the old office building the government used to rent for the Navy Spooks, and later the Customs and Immigration Service, before it was eaten by the Department of Homeland Security. The boxy 1970s […]

Fidel announced via midnight letter to Granma, the official Cuban newspaper, that he is stepping down, and does not want to “cling to power” after nearly fifty years. It is not an obituary; we will still have to wait for that. It sounded a lot like the old Castro we have known for so long, […]

Fidel announced via midnight letter to Granma, the official Cuban newspaper, that he is stepping down, and does not want to “cling to power” after nearly fifty years. It is not an obituary; we will still have to wait for that. It sounded a lot like the old Castro we have known for so long, […]

Can there be coincidence that this President’s Day, honoring Lincoln and Washington, can simultaneously be the commemoration of the independence of Kosovo and the anniversary of the election of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy? Perhaps it is just that history is bunk, as Henry Ford maintained, and there are only so many days […]