Governance

Despite fashionable twaddle about American decline, America's cultural influence has never been as dominant as it is now. Indeed, the 21st century promises to be the American Century to an even greater extent than the 20th. The American attitude to life – The American Idea – is now reflected in the universal aspirations of all humanity. Throughout history foreign observers have perceived and portrayed the dignity and majesty of the American Idea in ways that have impacted the thinking of the rest of the human race and triggered their desire to emulate the good life.

Bird flu has been making news headlines lately, but it’s certainly not the only new disease that the world’s health experts worry about.

They customarily fly over war zones, but they could soon make their way to a neighborhood near you. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), remote-controlled aircraft that operate with no on-board human pilot, are foraying into civilian airspace as law-enforcement agencies and private citizens obtain these machines and fly them.

On Wednesday I was invited to speak on a panel at the 2012 National Electricity Forum, an event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, in Washington DC. As the kickoff speaker on the panel, my message to them noted that the power industry is an industry that is under attack. An attack not being carried out by terrorists or invading armies, rather it is being attacked by emerging new technologies that have been advancing quickly and are currently beginning to boil around the edges.

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future of international piracy. The conclusion? Incidents of piracy are on the rise.

Russia underwent several governmental upheavals in the last hundred years—from tsarism to communism, then on to capitalism—and the massive demonstrations in Moscow and other Russian cities this past weekend against election fraud have some int