Expanding the Legacy
Crackpot at the Helm
The established wisdom, first formulated and then imposed by the United States, says that trade encourages nations to maintain peace. In the decades following the end of World War II, the US erected a new world order based on the premise that cross border trade creates common interests which conspire...
Turning the Tables
President Trump may enjoy his Twitter-powered banter and bluster; he is not quite getting his way either at home or abroad. As US relations with the European Union and others sour, President Trump pours out one problem after the other, blaming all and sundry – and particularly the much-maligned EU...
Clown of the Republic
The Paris king of comedy likes to make people wince - either in agony or in shock. His jokes and comments frequently unleash a firestorm on social media where the holier-than-thou brigade rules and expresses its faux-indignation in no uncertain terms. Yassine Belattar, a guy who revels in poking fun at both the establishment and established thought, has received numerous death threats - too many, in fact, to count.
Vlad’s Stooge or Russia’s Promise?
She never had any real chance of winning the Russian presidency and in the end only managed to obtain 1.53% of the vote - at least according to the official tally. Ksenia Sobchak did, however, manage to put issues on the agenda the Kremlin would prefer to ignore. She appeared on state-run national television to denounce the annexation of Crimea as an illegal act. Ms Sobchak also called for the legalisation of soft drugs and expressed strong support for the LGBTQ community - livening up the usually sycophantic news broadcasts.
Alfa Romeo: Driven by Emotion
Should Jeremy Clarkson actually like a car that is not a Volkswagen Golf, most readers would express disbelief. After all, the enfant terrible of automotive journalism is notoriously dismissive of most manufacturers’ effort at progress. Don’t get him started on French cars. The Germans, Mr Clarkson often contends, are very...
Touch and Go
So far this year, Europe’s centre ground has held firm – sort of. After Dutch populist Geert Wilders in March failed to significantly expand his following, French voters on Sunday rejected Marine Le Pen in the decisive round of the presidential elections, sending instead former investment banker Emmanuel Macron to...
A World in Disarray
Moving at a disconcertingly accelerated clip, contemporary reality encroaches on visions of a dystopian world until recently confined to the realm of horror fiction. Featuring newspeak, doublethink, and memory hole – all currently accepted practices – George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, first published in 1949 and never out of print, again shot to the top of bestsellers lists, as did Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) which depicts life in New England – a theocratic dictatorship which takes power, scraps the constitution, and reduces women to mere vessels for breeding.
The Luxury Book: An Antidote to Digital Fatigue
Mass-market luxury publishing, not necessarily a contradiction in terms, contributes to the resilience of the paper book. In the UK, Penguin Books – the world’s largest publishing house and built on the now perhaps outdated premise that a good book should not cost more than a pack of cigarettes – regularly releases luxury clothbound editions of classic works of literature for as little as £14. With the price of a pack of smokes approaching the ten quid mark, the publisher has stayed remarkable true to its mission.
Wheel of Fortune: In Search of the Golden Decade
Download a PDF of this essay A golden decade is all it takes for a nation to progress from basket case to powerhouse and erect a solid foundation for lasting economic success. The 1980s were such a decade for South Korea which tripled its per capita annual income to almost...
Quad: Timeless Value
At the high-end, product quality and diversity do not go hand-in-hand. There are only so many ways to audiophile Nirvana. When no corners are cut, the result may be akin to a straight line. As it happens, that is also the way an audio amplifier ideally operates – a straight...
