Magazine

Using a pointer, Shalikashvili directed Perry’s attention to a disturbing set of photographs. Improbable as it might have seemed coming just three and a half years after a United States-led coalition blasted Saddam Hussein to his knees, elements of the Republican Guard (Saddam’s elite troops), supported by mechanized infantry, armor, and tank units, were moving […]

But first, duty called. White arrived to find a film crew and a swarm of tweedy officials from the National Science Center on hand to celebrate an educational “partnership agreement” with the Army. With weary resignation, he ushered the scientists in, gamely posed for grip ‘n’ grin photos, and with practiced efficiency, dispatched the group […]

The cost and ease of sharing information in biological research is plummeting, thanks to computers and the Internet. Sending files over jerry-rigged 14K modems the way Brand did was convenient, but nothing compared to streaming swaths of genetic data worldwide in seconds. But at the same time, the potential value of new information in biology […]

Logging onto America Online, however, one might have surmised that May 16, 2001 was the most frivolous 24-hour stretch in recorded history. On AOL’s welcome screen, the startup window that greets about 70 million different people each month, the headlines contained nary a mention of Arctic drilling or misplaced evidence. In the choicest, eye-level section […]

But first, duty called. White arrived to find a film crew and a swarm of tweedy officials from the National Science Center on hand to celebrate an educational “partnership agreement” with the Army. With weary resignation, he ushered the scientists in, gamely posed for grip n’ grin photos, and with practiced efficiency, dispatched the group […]

To illustrate his point, Barabasi uses the famous game, “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” in which the second-tier movie star can be linked with almost any other actor in a couple of simple steps. Charlie Chaplin, for example, was in A King in New York with Robert Arden, who was in Little Shop of Horrors […]

Then came the saga of Joseph Ellis. A hugely successful prestigious historian, Ellis was recently forced by the media to reveal a nether persona; a pathetically wistful Walter Mitty wanabee. In the 60’s, Ellis was studying history–not, as were some his age, making history. And so as the years went by, he told friends, relatives […]

In 1993, U.S. District Court Judge D. Brooks Smith gave a speech to the Pittsburgh chapter of the conservative Federalist Society in which he promoted a strikingly narrow interpretation of the Constitution. Smith declared that “[t]he Framers’ primary, if not sole” intent in vesting in Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce through the Commerce […]

Although the Homeland Security Agency was less than immaculate in its conception–indeed, its announcement seems to have been driven by the desire to keep Coleen Rowley’s testimony that afternoon from dominating the front pages the next morning–it nevertheless strikes me as, on the whole, a good idea. It may have been hastily put together by […]

If ever there was a conflict that Washington should have seen coming, this would seem to be it. Macedonia is not some mysterious, impenetrable land, like North Korea, where good intelligence is hard to come by. Thousands of GIs and scores of U.S. intelligence agents have been on the ground in that Balkan nation since […]