Ever since Governor Sarah Palin took center stage in 2008, I have found her a fascinating figure in national politics. But her most significant relationship is not with politics – it’s with the press. Following her every step with an alarming urgency, the media obsesses over her – but they have not always been entirely … Read more
Timur Kuran’s The Long Divergence is a history of comparative “organizational development.” While the Middle East was once “globally optimal” with its kit of waqfs and legal pluralism, Western Europe soon emerged as the unchallenged dynamo, sporting tools like joint-stock companies and consolidative inheritance schemes. For centuries after, the Middle East stagnated amidst its “structural … Read more
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) appeared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” chastising the 2012 field of Republican candidates for clinging to “isolationism.” Senator McCain has long been a vocal proponent of American military involvement abroad. He vigorously advocated for American interventionism in the 2008 presidential election, and was soundly defeated by Barack Obama and his milder foreign … Read more
Cynics will look at the Groupon IPO and see a seminal event in the history of the second tech bubble: the day the bubble floated to Main Street. Here’s how the story goes: Groupon’s business model isn’t defensible, because anyone can set up an email list with coupons; its business practices aren’t profitable, indeed they’re losing … Read more
Hello there. For those who are new to the Harvard Political Review or “The Libertarian Perspective,” please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Naji Filali, and I am a rising sophomore studying government at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you have not already deduced my political orientation, I am a libertarian (*gasp*). … Read more
On Tuesday, June 14, Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. announced it had requested a petroleum exploration permit to develop large shale oil deposits in the Shfela Basin, 30 miles west of Jerusalem. Zion Oil & Gas is one of many companies beginning to develop Israel’s large shale oil deposits. Though the reserves were discovered years … Read more
I have nothing new to contribute on Anthony Weiner’s Twitter debacle. And, whether or not I consider it important enough to cover (read: not), we can count on Sarah Palin to ‘refudiate’ herself at least every few months. But thanks to the pervasive, horizontal nature of social media, you no longer need to be a politician to have … Read more
After fifteen years of bad reviews and negative press, Woody Allen has gone to Paris to find himself. The result is Midnight in Paris, a classic Allen comedy. Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a self-described Hollywood hack, a screenwriter who churns out mediocre scripts for monotonous studio blockbusters. He is in Paris with his finance, Inez, … Read more
The circus of nostalgia at the center of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is populated by the post-WWI Lost Generation and its European contemporaries. Interestingly, this group seems to have interested Allen decades before making this film. Take this clip of his standup from the ‘60s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEsFbeqiD8w I don’t want to read too much into … Read more
It is an open secret that the U.S. healthcare system faces a huge issue of how to provide care to tens of millions of new patients following healthcare reform legislation. Combined with the influx of the newly insured is the problem of our aging population, which is sure to strain healthcare infrastructure and exacerbate rising … Read more