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Short Fiction

• By the River: Almost no one believed the old man when he warned visitors about sharks in the Ohio River. They attributed the old man’s DANGER: SHARKS sign to senility—until he showed them the evidence. Then they sang a different tune.  

• The Girl She Used to Be: Allison disappeared before Jim could ask her to marry him. Now Allison was back. But what dark secrets was she hiding?

• The Dreams of Lord Satu: Some business trips are more demanding than others. When Marc Jonas complained about his upcoming business trip to the planet Kelphi, his boss said, "The Kelphi haven’t eaten humans in any significant numbers for a hundred years. You’re not afraid, are you Marc?"

• Last Dance with Emma: There was only one problem with the beautiful young woman Randy met on the dance floor: She died more than thirty years ago....

• Hay Moon : In the summer of 1932, the undead invaded a rural county in Ohio. More than seven decades later, one man still lives with the memories...

• Gate Time :  Do you airports scare you? Airports scared Josh Geiger...

• Bitter Hearts: "Sometimes love is cruel."

• The Red Devil: A security guard at a car dealership in Texas has reason to wonder about his coworkers.

• The Robots of Jericho In a factory in West Virginia, a college intern discovers that five industrial robots are not what they appear to be.

• Citizens: The politics of America’s future can be deadly. A conservative senator of the twenty-second century finds himself sentenced to death---by a court convened in 1793. 

• Giants in the Trees: When Jim agreed to give Paul Taulbee a ride home from work, he unwittingly entered his older colleague’s private corner of hell.

• The Vampires of Wallachia: A routine drive through Ohio takes a sinister turn.

• The Wasp: "God made the bee; but the Devil made the wasp."

• The Caliphate: When a terrorist group takes over a North American city, two college friends are forced to confront their ultimate breaking points---and each other.

• Whatever:  Greg Hensley knew he desired his subordinate...But how dangerous was she?

• Gaia Cried Out: To Kara Teller, Nicholas Naretti seemed like Mr. Wonderful. Nicholas was tall, handsome, and possessed a strong social conscience. However, Kara soon discovered that beneath Nicholas's passion lay a murderous intent.
   

Poems

• Juxtaposition

 

Commentary/ Miscellaneous Archives

2010

• Archives for June 24- July 19

• One-dimensional bad guys versus multidimensional villains in fiction
  (advice for writers)

• June 16-June 27: Book reviews, low libidos, ethnicity and casting

• June 1-June 15: Barbara Bush on health care, an American bounty hunter in Pakistan, and more....

• May 25 - May 31: Language posts and more....

• The Arizona illegal immigration controversy: It’s not about race; it’s about money

• The calendar's roots in ancient loan sharking / Medieval trivia

• What is a SWOT analysis?

• Kindle Wars / The Lost by Jack Ketchum / and more......

• H.G. Wells and the virtues of cynicism 

• What I'm reading: Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy / Fareed Zakaria on the Obama health care setback

• Bill Gates and the paradigm shift of adulthood 

• Harry Truman, off-color humor, and the risks of assumed rapport

• Success and the short attention span

• Vilfredo Pareto and the vital few

• George Bush, Bill Clinton, and the perils of groupthink

• George Washington, samurai warriors, and first impressions

• Yet another wrong prediction / Literary agents and "synchronicity" / HBO's Rome: a solid "not bad"

• Superfreakonomics a good read / Chinese influence in the movies / Google, China, and corporate courage

• More on politics and fiction: Stephen King

• Reader question: Using Rosetta Stone as part of a "program"

• Free speech does not equal anonymity / Chinese bachelors and global instability

• You can have anything you want....but you can't have everything you want.

• Historical accuracy and The Tudors

• FSI foreign language courses available for free online / Depressed? Don't worry about it.

• Sidelined by the evil rogue scanner virus 

• The American who joined the CCP / One television channel, five hours per day

 

2010

• Power vocabulary: Does "disabuse" have anything to do with harming someone? and  Is "dissemble" the opposite of "assemble"?  You likely already know what abuse means, and perhaps you also know that the prefix dis- means “not”. So what does disabuse mean? Does it mean to “not abuse” someone? What kind of a word would that be? A pretty useless word, right? Fortunately, disabuse has another meaning with is far more useful (Continue reading..)

• Power vocabulary: What Greek word for “shield” can also mean "sponsorship" or "protection"? In Greek mythology, the god Hephaestus was the deity of technology of technology, blacksmiths, and other artisans. He was also the god of volcanoes, fire, and metals. (A busy guy, that Hephaestus.) (Continue reading...)

• Warusa : Things are not as good as you think they are Warusa is another aspect of the formidible Japanese quality control arsenal. Warusa means “badness” in Japanese. Conventional wisdom encourages us to look for the positive. When you use the concept of warusa, you do just the opposite: You examine a process, a product, or an organization and ask “What’s wrong here?” This question can be restated as “What can be improved?” (Continue reading...)

• Fiction, life experience, and novels about novelists How much life experience is required in order to write compelling, meaningful fiction? And how diverse do these experiences need to be? Should serious writing be delayed until a certain age? Does early success doom a writer to self- repetition? There are, of course, no precise answers to these questions. It is possible, however, to examine the work of writers past and present, and come up with some insights.  (Continue reading...)

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge's albatross and spiritual redemption You’ve no doubt heard expressions like “I’ve got an albatross around my neck,” or “My home mortgage has become a real albatross.” In all cases, the metaphorical albatross is a burden of some sort. The image of an albatross as a burden is derived from a narrative poem called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In this piece, British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge compares a dead bird to the weight of sin. (Today the metaphor has been expanded to include anything that is burdensome or onerous.) (Continue reading....)
   

• Adam Smith's invisible hand (February 24, 2010) Is greed good? Well, maybe greed isn’t all bad....Today’s installment of The Idea Machine comes from the exciting field of economics (which Thomas Carlyle referred to as “the dismal science.)... In 1776 economist Adam Smith published the book A Wealth of Nations. (Actually, the full name of the book was An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; but it is generally known by its shorter name.) (Continue reading...)

 

 

 

 

2009

 

• Reflections on Obama's first year

• Learning Business Chinese

• Ronald Reagan's Berlin Wall speech

• Stephen Hunter on the samurai / Terrorist sympathies and the silver spoon / On dream tests

• USSR : rest in ignominy / One more reason to ignore professional sports / The man who should have been president

• Giving the gift of language (and getting back to basics) /  American presidents who speak Mandarin Chinese?

• Why I recommend some foreign languages over others (Or: Why would anyone want to learn German?)

• Anonymous online nastiness, aging, and social networking sites

• Suspense, realism, and Dean Koontz's Velocity 

• "Take that, infidels!": Iranian "Cyber Army" hacks Twitter 

• Spoken Chinese fluency without Chinese characters: Is it possible? 

• Quick review: Stalin: A Biography by Robert Service

• Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell and the decline of the horror genre/ Mini-review of Weapon: A Visual History of Arms and Armor 

• Economics 101: the one-sentence summary

• A language is a tool

• English and national identity in the Philippines

• N is for Nobel. O is for overrated.

• Here comes the bride....and the lawyers!

• Reader Mail: "Hay Moon"

• Quick review: A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918, by G.J. Meyer

• The Ghosts of Cincinnati

• Quick review: Dirty White Boys, by Stephen Hunter

• Six words about the Tiger Woods affair: "I don't know, I don't care"

• Best movie atmosphere: Hue in Full Metal Jacket

• The Swiss fight Islamic radicalism with....building codes?

• "The lady doth protest too much, methinks"

• On the President's Afghanistan speech

• The right thing for the wrong reason

• Re-Release of "Hay Moon"

• Linguistic authenticity in fictional works

• How to scare off a dating advice columnist in eight easy steps

• The Soviet anti-tank dog

• Sarah Palin, the GOP, and ghosts of Democrats past

• Interest rates, China, and the American spendthrift

• The most prolific writer ever? 

• Baby Boomers, healthcare reform, and the Big O 

• Training the next generation of CIA agents 

• Eco-terrorism and "Gaia Cried Out"

• On the question of Kindle…  

• Should drivers be ticketed for not speaking English? 

• Reader question: foreign language self-study on a budget

• New short story: "Whatever"

• What brings in the traffic? 

• Language, market principles, and eternal change 

• Trimnell's Trivia: "To err is Truman"/ Douglas MacArthur’s weakness

• New short story: The Wasp

• Trimnell's Triva: Death and taxes, Greek, Latin, and Charlemagne, Who named the tarantula?

• Trimnell's Trivia: Aristotle and women's teeth, A question about aluminum, The last public execution 

• Trimnell's Trivia: Train travel and U.S. president / Of Roman gods and English months

• Trimnell's Trivia: Ho Chi Minh's metaphor, Churchill's Iron Curtain speech 

• Ray Bradbury on self-education

• Back-to-school with the Big O

• Machine translation and foreign language study

• Ben Stein asks: Are children worth it? 

• When books and movies collide: I am Legend, Stir of Echoes, and No Country for Old Men

• Quick review: Black Powder War by Naomi Novik

• Reader questions about "The Vampires of Wallachia"

• Reads I remember

• Comments on my "President Bush and the Spanish language" post 

• The Red Queen by Matt Ridley (quick review)

• What Ernest Hemingway had to say about sports

• Offline extrovert, online curmudgeon  

• Attention guys: novels for your midlife crisis (part 1)

• Do tall people rule?

• The philosopher's dilemma: to marry or not to marry?

• Horror fiction: short stories vs. novels  

• Discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams"

• Short story recommendations for summer 

• My review of W. 

• Ho Chi Minh, perceived value, and YouTube 

• Slavery in ancient Rome and the GM bailout / More news that isn't: Americans over 50 and Michael Jackson

• Passengers, The Sixth Sense, and derivative works

• Reader Question: "Giants in the Trees" / Quick review of Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell /Women's rights in Iran

• The Victorian vampire vs. the modern zombie 

• Politics and fiction: do they mix? 

• General Motors, the banking crisis, and Obama's new "executive pay" measures 

• What I'm reading: A Spell for the Revolution, by C.C. Finlay

• The stakes in the Iranian Election

• Should you learn Hindi?

• Book review: Songs for the Missing, by Stuart O'Nan

• Debt, Obama, and the Tiananmen anniversary 

• A few words on the Big O's Middle East speech 

• Dick Cheney and the same-sex marriage brouhaha 

• CNN reports: "Few Americans have favorable view of Muslim world" 

• How the government screwed you today / More bizarre news out of North Korea

• Review of Freakonomics

• The end of the road for Kim Jong il? 

• My take on Sonia Sotomayor / Current events and "Citizens" 

• Review: Retribution: the Battle for Japan 1944-5 by Max Hastings

• Acceptable speech and 80s rock

• Michelle Obama brings freedom to Iran, too 

• New short story: "Citizens"  

• John Grisham, life experience, and story ideas 

• A lesser known spot on the linguistic internet 

• New short story: "The Robots of Jericho"

• One more thing the President can't grasp

• History repeats itself… 

• New in the bookstore: Streetwise Chinese

• Dumbing down language texts

• Good riddance to Arlen Specter 

• Barack Obama, socialism, and Ayn Rand 

• Book review: Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

• President Obama, political correctness, and the "torture" controversy 

• CIA still lacking critical foreign language skills

• Reflections on the Obama-Chavez handshake

• A secession movement simmering in Texas?

• The stealth price increase 

• News that isn't: people over 50 on the Internet

• Just when I think the Democrats have a monopoly on stupidity…. 

• Obama’s bow to the Saudi King: Does it matter? 

• "The Caliphate," horror in translation, and more

• On age, sex appeal, and the American obsession with youth 

• China as economic savior? 

• In Europe, fellow socialists Brown and Obama buddy up 

• Interpreters stressed by mortgage meltdown 

• Great expectations and the Obama presidency 

• Exercise caution before switching careers 

• Say goodbye to perks at work

• How Obama is boosting the price of gold 

• Future of English, Mandarin Education debated in Malaysia

• Obama's bowling gaffe

• Iran rebuffed Obama: no surprises here 

• Political posturing and the AIG bonuses 

• Reader Question: Current events and the "The Caliphate"

• Why Rush Limbaugh is bad news for the GOP 

• Throwing Good Money after Bad 

• Please, comrades, buy our bonds!

• What are we now, Venezuela?

• For China, the downside of globalization arrives 

• "I'll have another truckload of your money, please!"

• Obama’s mortgage bailout scheme 

• The New York Post, Al Sharpton, and the race card

• Does Obama Nation mean a socialist future?

• The rise and fall of the finance industry and “brand name” B-schools 

• Book review: Keith Massey’s Intermediate Arabic for Dummies

• Is Barack Obama the next Jimmy Carter? 

• Book review: Pale Horse Coming, by Stephen Hunter

• Book review: 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

• Book review: The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World 1788-1800

• Book review: the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

• Book review: Just After Sunset (Stephen King)

 

2008

• Some "Trimnell's Trivia" entries

• Random commentaries December - November

• The shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist

• Why the Detroit 3 bailout is a bad idea 

• Finally, it's OK to like France again

• McCain and Obama pledge to work together to screw taxpayers

• Nancy Pelosi proposes bailout package for ailing porn industry

• Obama family draws stares, adoration at Chicago-area supermarket

• Down but not out, Sarah Palin reportedly eyes Wasilla PTA post

• Iranian President Mahmoud Amadinejad scolds president-elect Obama in a newly surfaced letter 

• DHL: "Don't Hire for Long"

• More corporate welfare on the way… 

• "A" world language vs. "the" world language 

• Time to throw in the towel

• The Obama Victory: Ten Good Things

• Proposition K and the World's Oldest Profession

• Conservatives, we blew it...

• Obama nation and the loyal opposition 

• McCain vs. Obama: who would be better for business?

• Obama and the S-word

• Saturday night and the GREAT ONE was calling

• Language, soft power, and China 

• Chinese cars in the U.S.? 

• Japanese general's career a World War II casualty

• Iran's barbaric mullahs are at it again 

• Is English declining as a lingua franca in Asia? 

• Halloween: satanic holiday or harmless fun? 

• Sarah Palin drives up SNL ratings...but what about her own image? 

• Hindi, Chinese, phonetics, and "common sense" in education 

• Some really good news about Mandarin studies in the United States 

• The Chicago Tribune endorses Obama 

• U.S. Military still struggles with language barrier in Iraq

• Australia "overhauling" Mandarin language education

• Is Korean an "endangered language"?

• Why you should read The Jewel of Medina

• Is John McCain insane?

• "Extreme" globalization a likely casualty of financial mess

• Free speech or political correctness: anti-blasphemy resolution adopted by U.N. 

• Why we're mad about the bailout 

• Now we're bailing out the states too 

• Who is to blame for the subprime crisis? 

• Some resources for learning Korean 

• Is the Russian language making a comeback? 

• Palin, Israel, and Iranian nukes 

• Russian leaders grumble about the "U.S. Contagion" 

• Put some teeth in the corporate bailouts 

• Saudi Arabia not a top destination for foreign students of Arabic 

• Russia and the curse of oil 

• On hate mail and angry comments 

• Generation Y and money

• Follow-up: the conflict in South Ossetia

• What I'm Reading:The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30)

• Russia's demographic malaise

• Foreign language: Americans may finally be getting it 

• Sarah Palin belongs to the world now

• Dissecting Sarah Palin's acceptance speech: an alternative conservative view 

• Did Obama play the race card? 

• Cuil: a better (or necessary) mousetrap?

• Obama's performance in Paris 

• Kids show off their Mandarin skills in Lawrence, KS 

• Justice and death in Iran 

• McCain's latest tactic may backfire  

• Lawyers gone amok---again

• American parents move to Asia so child can learn Mandarin

• Residents to name sewage plant after George W. Bush

• A reader question about the Toyota Prius 

• The New Yorker tries to be a little too clever for its own good 

• Something worth watching on YouTube 

• Barrack Obama's "Spanish comments" 

• Is Iran the new USSR?  

• What Obama's "shift to the center" really means 

• You're never too old to be in shape 

• Is an "obsession with English" undermining native language skills in Asia?

• Should employers refuse to hire smokers and overweight applicants?

• Commodities traders and environmentalists become strange bedfellows 

• This time I have to side with Obama 

• More on Chinese language education in the U.S. 

• A brief review of the The Mist 

• The high ground and the gutter at YouTube 

• China and oil prices 

• Obama campaign: no hijabs, please 

• Booing Hillary in Michigan  

• Obama's "knives vs. guns" comment 

• The joys of business travel 

• Protests over U.S.-Iraqi security talks 

• Does it really matter at this point? 

• Is race really the issue that divides the Democrats? 

• Russian nationalism and Indiana Jones  

• Google, Amazon and resource allocation 

• How the media shafted Hillary (again) 

• Why John McCain might scare me even more 

• Youthful nationalism in China and Russia 

• Teacher salaries and time off 

• What I’m Reading:The Age of Turbulence

• Silly celebrity sex news

• Mandarin Chinese an "integral piece of a good American education" 

• Paul Broun: another aspiring national nanny 

• Obama and the "youth vote" 

• Why the Tibet issue won't go away 

• Tough euro times in Italy 

• The technical definition of a recession may not matter 

• Make the infidels pay at the pump

• Don't expect al-Sadr to give up easily 

• Taxing the Internet 

• Obesity and discrimination

• Do audiences need another anti-Bush piece?  

• Does NATO need to expand into Eastern Europe? 

• Books, consumer choice, and monopsony 

• "Global English" is just bad English

• Learn English or go to jail? 

• Free speech, Europe and Islam 

• For those of you studying Thai… 

• Become a lawyer without law school?

• What divorce parties and weddings have in common

• Another reason to just learn the language… 

• My words exactly… 

• There's a disconnect here somewhere...

• Do interest rate cuts = higher oil? 

• I knew that this was coming....

• My take on the Elliot Spitzer scandal

• Foreign language vocabulary acquisition

• One more reason not to move to Ohio...

• How to fix the economy… 

• Should Congress be meddling with executive pay packages? 

• Will Hindi and Chinese dethrone English?

• A cool piece of slipstream fiction 

• A frustrating story about American schools 

• My very brief review of the Canon HG-10 

• Prince Harry in Afghanistan

• Barack "Hussein" Obama and the "Muslim question"

• A Mandarin immersion program in Minnesota 

• YouTube: Public Enemy in Pakistan 

• Will rising costs in China lead to inflation in the U.S.? 

• What I'm reading: Next

• Think summer

• Another argument for married clergy

• UK schools change linguistic priorities 

• What I'm Reading:The Peloponnesian War

• Oil over $100

• What I'm Reading: The October Country

• Eighties Rock Moment: Triumph ("Fight the Good Fight")

• High linguistic requirements for office 

• It's nice to be quoted

• Author photo

• Amy Chua on immigration 

• No excuses anymore (for not learning a language)

• Ebay's vulnerabilities

• Reader disturbed by Spanish-language ad 

• And now, the backlash…. 

• Foreign Languages, Patriotism, and American values

• Iran in space...and what it means for us

• Don't count Japan out just yet 

• Another case of judicial stupidity in Afghanistan

• Another reason why we need to break our fossil fuel habit

• Barack Obama's plan for fighting terrorism

• A few political musings before Super Tuesday 

• The decline of the West? We've heard this one before...

• Training global management in China

• Signs of the times…

• Soul-searching in cubicle land 

• What will Bill Gates' departure mean for Microsoft? 

• How oil could take a big tumble

• Top ten majors

• Norwegian government mandates 40% female execs 

• Save the world or save yourself? 

• Two visions of employee motivation 

• Detroit may regret banking on the BRICs 

• Think your boss is nosy? Check this out… 

• Economic stimulus should focus on consumers---not corporations 

• What's so great about Ebay?

• Sears is reorganizing, but is this enough? 

• Less creativity, more vehicle shots  

• Will Chamco be the next Honda or Toyota? 

• The candidates: good, the bad, and the ugly (a political digression)

• What I'm reading: Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser 

• Hyping the mortgage crisis 
   

 

2007

Miscellaneous Entries

• September 27 - October 2, 2007

History

• John. F. Kennedy and the "engineer gap" 

• David McCollough's biography of John Adams

• Why did the Six Day War occur?

• The Battle of Thermopylae 

• Zoroastrianism 

• Show and tell: Russian rubles

• The Middle East during World War I

• The Dark Side of Peter the Great

• Kennedy and Communism

 

The Middle East

• An end to problems with Iran? Well, not quite..

• Ed's book review: Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

• On leaving Iran out of the Middle East peace talks 

• Time for a feminist uprising in Saudi Arabia 

• Mahmoud--- bringin' down the house at Columbia!

• How do you say "long-winded" in Farsi?

• Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University: is this a good idea?

• Don't like the Dubai Nasdaq deal? Don't buy an SUV 

• France says: "Oui! The time has come to tear Iran a new one." 

• Busy professionals and foreign language acquisition

• Ahmadinejad renews an old dream of Khomeini’s

• Pakistan: the land of radical Islam and WMDs  

• The latest tactic in Iraq: arming Sunni militia groups 

• Another miscarriage of justice in the Muslim Middle East 

• It’s time to wake up to the reality in Iran

• Taking stock of Saddam’s execution 

• Diane Sawyer's interview with Bashar al-Asad 

• Sorting out the good guys and the bad guys in the Iraqi government 

• Iran faces problems with terrorism 

• Should the U.S. talk directly to Iran?

• Tough questions in Riyadh

Asia

• Japan's new role in the world

• Will Chinese cars make it in the U.S. market? 

• History repeats itself in China

• China's homicidal grandparents 

• North Korean "nuclear buyout" plan announced 

• For Australia, China is now a more significant trading partner than Japan 

• Why outsourcing to China may backfire in the long run 

• China's next target: cheerleading 

• Japan should own up and move on

• Asia's Gender Imbalance

• Chinese missile test a wake-up call for radical free traders 

• Pollution, income gap become priorities in China 

• Even North Korea is on the internet these days 

Latin America

• Setbacks for Latin America’s neo-Marxists 

• The end of the line for Hugo Chavez? 

• No Child Left Behind --- Hugo Chavez style 

• The latest Chavez oil grab--- and calls to boycott Citgo 

• Chavez spooks investors 

• As Venezuela’s economy sputters, Chavez turns on the bluster 

• Observations from San Luis Potosi, Mexico

Europe

• Russian voters say da to Czar Putin

• Russia doing what Russia does best

• Germany's problem is our problem, too

• Behind Putin’s anti-U.S. tirade 

• It's official: Nicholas Sarkozy is the next president of France

• Sarkozy: the man who may change France

Society

• Newspaper decides not to endorse John Edwards over corporate criticisms

• Supporting our troops --- by taking away their slot machines 

• Abstinence-only programs and teen pregnancy

• As Clinton moves to the center, she loses her appeal for the hard-core left  

• Even if you love him, don’t hold your breath for Ron Paul

• Huckabee: a tax-and-spend evangelical

• The issues behind the Jim Watson row 

• Are high-earning women "dating down?" 

• Jena 6: civil rights ---- or bad adolescent behavior? 

• The Ohio Taliban rides again

• Moderation needed in political, economic globalization

• We are what we read 

• Flying the prudish skies: score another one for the busybodies

• Love, marriage, and financial secretiveness

• Fighting terrorism with metaphors

• CNN dumbs itself down 

• Bush-era conservatives are obsessed with sex 

• The Dems challenge the GOP in the holier-than-thou department

• More fretting about the "over-sexed" culture

• They must be getting kind of bored in Amsterdam

• On Hillary, Bush, and political dynasties

• A few comments regarding the JFK terror plot

• The Religious Right goes after Romney

• Protecting the good people of Ohio--- from strippers?

• Henryk A. Kowalczyk for President?

• Michael Moore Exposed: Oh My…

• Blaming teachers for America's education woes

• The immigration protest that the American press ignored

• More debate about the H1B

• Don Imus got what was coming to him

• Will Baby Boomers sink the economy?

• The inconsistent nature of U.S. drug laws 

• The latest fashionable worry: underweight fashion models 

• The right to bear arms and common sense

• Oscar who?

• The flat tax is back in the news 

• Do schools overemphasize "self-esteem"?

• We need a new batch of political commentators 

Business / Career

• Common sense, but still good advice

• Offshoring leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of British chocolate workers 

• Robert Reich on "corporate citizenship"

• Career advice for Britney Spears

• Chinese companies building plants in the U.S.: a new trend?

• Should you fire your boss? 

• On parenting, work, and corporate culture 

• As gas prices rise, calls for government intervention will increase

• Gasoline subsidies and free trade

• Is the MBA still relevant?

• The future for workers over forty

• Lessons from Yahoo in China

• Expatriates should speak the local language

• Bank of America caters to those who break U.S. laws 
   

Technology

• Musician grumbles about illegal file-swapping culture

• Ambitious translation claims for new Fuji copier 

• When virus protection software goes psycho 

• Super-cheap laptops and Intel

• Why I am in no hurry to upgrade to Microsoft Vista

• Digital rights management, the music industry, and Steve Jobs 

• Microsoft backpedals on Vista sales

• Web 2.0 startups repeating old mistakes in new ways

• Ads on Wikipedia? Will Wales share the wealth?

Automobiles

• Just what the U.S. automotive industry needed 

• Toyota takes the number one spot, but….

• Ford’s Mustang crossover vehicle is one to watch

• Will Toyota’s expansion veer into overreach? 

• History repeats itself at Chrysler, but the company's management never learns

Language

• Is Mandarin "The new English?"

• On poor foreign language skills and the "global naiveté" of Americans 

• "The zeal for learning Chinese is sweeping the world."

• i-Pod language classes the latest thing 

• Latin as a "universal" language?

• Does the Irish language have a future?

• Even Thais have difficulty with the Thai language

• Rival politicians in Australia trade jibes over foreign language skills 

• Japanese the number one blogging language?

• President Bush and the Spanish language  

• JFK and Foreign Languages

• Minnesota Newspaper kvetching over drive to create a language immersion program for kids

• A madrassa in the NYC public school system? Probably not.

 

 

2006

Interviews

• Interview with Entrepreneur / Political Writer Henryk A. Kowalczyk

Automobiles

• Does Toyota Have Too Many SUVs?

• Ford Accepts its Decline

• What we Don’t Need is Another Hummer 

Business / Careers

• Before You Start that Retail Business…. 

• Few Surprises in Most "Lucrative Degrees" Survey Results 

• Would your employer really steal your identity?

• Software enables detailed employee monitoring….but is this a good idea? 

U.S. Politics

• The Republican Party reflects---but not too deeply

• Brushing up on the presidency of Gerald Ford 

• Reflections on the 65th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor

• What it will take for the Democrats to win in 2008

Society

• Lessons in Extreme Parenting

• Who Pays for "Corporate Citizenship?"

• The Rock-Star Salaries of University Presidents

IT / Internet

• How to Make Wikipedia Better...

• How Google Could Put an End to Click Fraud

• Two Quick Hits from the Tech World: IBM Sues Amazon…And Will Web Apps Make Desktop Applications Obsolete?

• Why we may soon be (happily) paying for email

• Google Guns for Microsoft

Economics

• Uncertain Future for Real Estate Agents

 

Books / Media

• The Lamentations of a Stephen King Fan

• Nudity and News Don't Mix

• Perdido Street Station Left Me Cold

Law

• Government Busybodies Declare War on Fat

• The Neglected Side of the Immigration Debate

Language

• Latin is Back

• The Distraction of Official English Laws

• Time Magazine: Americans need to learn foreign languages in order to compete in the 21st century

Asia

• North Korea Has a New Problem: an Assertive Japan

• Vietnam in the WTO

• More antics from China's bad boys in Beijing 

• China can Sink the Dollar

• Patriotism in Japanese schools is no cause for alarm

• Thai export crisis highlights the tilted playing field in Asia 
   

The Middle East

• The Seduction of Cheaper Oil

• Iran Wants Peace in Iraq....and Islamic Dictatorship

• It's Iran against the world again

• 9/11 Commemorations Long on Sadness, Short on Anger

Latin America

• Stating the obvious about Mexico--at Last

• Venezuelans cast ballots in an important election