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The Long View 2003-05-12: A Flowering of Frauds

I hadn't thought about Jayson Blair in a long time, which is probably for the best. Like Stephen Glass and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the temptation to tell a story we think people want to hear is sometimes just a little too tempting. John also commented on the stock

The Long View 2003-05-04: Snapshots

This speech will forever be known as Mission Accomplished. Of course, John didn't know at the time this would be remembered in retrospect as the epitome of us winning the war in Iraq and losing the peace. This line is pretty funny: There was one drawback: George W.

The Long View 2003-04-27: Misguided Plans

If only John were still here, I would love to talk with him about the current slate of US Presidential candidates. In this post from 2003, you can get a feel for what he would have thought of Jeb Bush. John probably would prefer a third term from Bill Clinton

Seriously, You Have to Eat Book Review

Seriously, You Have to Eat By Adam Mansbach, Illustrated by Owen Brozman Akashic Books, 2015 $15.95; 32 pages ISBN 978-1-61775-408-1 I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. I appreciate the work of Adam Mansbach, and new illustrator Owen Brozman. Mansbach'

The Long View 2003-04-22: Pandemics

This bit about SARS is interesting twelve years later. Influenza is interesting. The official mortality rate went up compared to what John had here, from 5.6% to 9.6% according to the WHO. Unfortunately, better record-keeping doesn't always equal better stats. This number is likely to be

The Long View 2003-04-17: Bad Ideas

One of the fascinating things about American foreign policy is our simultaneous capacity for utter dominance and utter incompetence. Baathists were forbidden from participating in the Iraqi government after the Second Iraq War, by analogy to the Second World War policy of de-Nazification. Unfortunately, this excluded pretty much everyone who

The Long View 2003-04-12: The World United

John's rather broad take on the Enlightenment makes me think of Pope Francis, and Pope Emeritus Benedict. Pope Francis' recent trip to America has been a huge success. From the very first, Francis' style has won over nearly everyone. You cannot find a better example of