Wasn’t the fall of the Berlin Wall supposed to set the world free and end history? In the 20 years since, communities worldwide have voluntarily retreated behind walls and security cameras. Link

In terms of the great implosion of the global economy which began on Wall Street in late 2008, the Greek financial collapse is a storm in a retsina glass. The sums concerned are trivial by the standards of modern multitrillion-dollar high finance, or indeed by the standards of the Bundesbank. But the rights and wrongs … Read more

You gotta love evolution. Japanese people have special tools that let them get more out of eating sushi than Americans can. They are probably raised with these utensils from an early age and each person wields millions of them. By now, you’ve probably worked out that I’m not talking about chopsticks. The tools in question … Read more

In the late 1970s, the historian Christopher Lasch famously described America as a culture of narcissism. Today we might well be called a nation of dysregulation. The signs that something is amiss in our inner mechanisms of control and restraint are everywhere. Link

In the winter of 1795 a young, talented and cheeky man named William-Henry Ireland signed the bottom of a tattered piece of paper “Wm Shakespeare.” It was the first of hundreds of notes, poems and plays that Ireland forged and passed off as William Shakespeare originals. The world was so desperate to read more of … Read more