Parries

March 2010

Before the Setup

Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.

February 2010

Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio

On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.

October 2009

My Hope: Obama’s Change

Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.

July 2009

At Modi’in Mall

There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.

Israel, the Bad So Far

I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.

March 2009

Namaste, Dharma Workmen

What do the Lost characters mostly want these days? It’s not to get off the island. Increasingly, the island is just where they live and love. If anything, they’ve found home — or, rather, their home found them.

February 2009

24, Lost Get Soft

When life gets fast, unlike how it’s lived by most of us out here in the dark, loyalties are quickly superceded by new circumstances. This is not despite values but because of them. Such Darwinian churn is a theme shared by the very different Lost and 24 and so might just be a defining one for our times.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Buddha

If someone is living life in reverse time while the rest of us are living it forwards, then our world is Buddhist, because such an impossibility falsifies reality, which must therefore be a dream.

January 2009

Shanghai Europe

So, finally, we stopped yesterday; the Israeli assault of late 2008/early 2009 on Gaza is over. With it, Israel lost moral purity and made vital strategic gains.

Panning for MacBook Pro

Even if it did nothing, was just a prop in a futuristic movie, the MacBook Pro would be impressive. It’s like a sculpture of my previous computer, the MacBook, except it’s actually an improved computer! So even though I’m looking at it now and touching it to write these words, I’m going to stop now just to look at it and touch it.

December 2008

Stop Yesterday

Is the goal of Israel’s assault on Gaza to discourage Hamas from firing rockets, or is it to render Hamas incapable of firing rockets? These are two very different projects, yet we are hearing about both from the government, which worryingly suggests that the government isn’t quite sure.

Short-circuiting Place-based Longing

If there is one tangible benefit to having lived in a variety of places it’s that it furnishes evidence of the futility of longing to be elsewhere.

October 2008

Ebullience, Please

A President of the United States must be ebullient. At the presidential debates we should have seen McCain like we saw him at the Al Smith dinner.

September 2008

History Tonight, McCain vs. Obama

McCain pulled through but he’d better improve, better get relaxed. This was the big one, and Obama came off a 21st century Brat Packer.

Encounter at Wetherspoone’s

As if those glass double doors belong to a wild saloon wherein one must repulse brigands just for a peaceful drink.

August 2008

A Crawl Across Crawley, Part 1

Irit, the Jam and I walk from Brighton to Gatwick Airport.

July 2008

Suddenly Seymour

Time was, Seymour Hersh’s dispatches were a cause for minor celebration. They were full- and deep-throated journalistic tours de force, possible changers of paradigms. But his latest, “Preparing the Battlefield” on funding covert ops in Iran, leaves too many clues that reveal precisely where he’s coming from.

June 2008

Another End of Times

With the recent reported training exercises over Crete, perhaps Israel’s strike on the Iranian regime’s machinery of genocide has already begun.

Dead Till Eilenspiegel

Beyond steadfastness and vigor in prosecuting Islamofascism, John McCain seems an American president I’d love even more than the great liberator George W. Bush (most of you just left, I know) because he is more American on immigration than either his party or the other.

All So Simple

First, there is a general moode and desire to write.

March 2008

Why AAPL

Apple’s operating system will, I believe, become in time the dominant one, and with a current market share of only 6% or so, that’s a lot more computers to sell. And as the only operating system seller that also sells the computers it runs on, as well as owning the shops they’re sold from, Apple stands to become a colossus, even a frightening one.

Clash of the Midgets

My phone! One of the reasons I didn’t want an iPhone is that I’m invested in the T9 text entry method and like it. But while I do like the Nokia N95’s slider, it creates discomfort when entering text because all the weight in the phone is further up.

January 2008

Dangers of the Gaza-Egypt border breach

Hamas may try to use Egyptian territory to stage cross-border attacks on Israel, aiming to operate in parts of the Sinai as Hezballah does in southern Lebanon.

Glick Dismisses Gaza Border Breach

Caroline Glick, the strident Jerusalem Post columnist, seems to see the Gaza-Egypt border breach as yet another in a long line of Israeli strategic disasters by incompetent leaders. I’m not convinced however of her arguments, mainly because she doesn’t make any.

Israel’s Greatest Victory Since Osirak

The great tactician Ariel Sharon steamrolled through Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and today we see another step in the unfolding of this masterplan to staunch the damage caused by the victory of the Six Day War in 1967.

I Do Like Mondays

First procedure: clean out the 2-cup mokka from the previous usage. The sink here is metal and I enjoy lightly bashing the coffee holder against it to knock the damp grains out then putting them in the rubbish before swilling out the remains under the tap. The sound is just the same as baristas make in cafes.

The Small Adventures - Part 2

There in the empty restaurant by the water at Dieppe I had toast with foie gras, a carafe of red wine, a huge plate of mussels and chips, and finally a creme brulee. Somehow, though I’ve eaten in restaurants hundreds of times, I felt grown up sitting there alone on my travels.

December 2007

The Small Adventures

Of course we were late for the train. We enquired frantically among the taxis for one who would accept the two dogs — mine and Davide’s — and take us to Termini Station so I could catch the 11pm train to Milan that would be one third of our journey to Britain.

Tony Blair and the Four-State Vision

Ariel Sharon’s disengagement policy reflected an understanding that ownership of the Palestinian issue is shared with Egypt and Jordan. Once Tony Blair acquires this view, he can help facilitate an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Spooked, They’ll Annoint Rudy

Because of the recent US National Intelligence Report, the electorate will turn to someone who demonstrates not only the ideological conviction required to continue to prosecute Islamism, but also the administrative savvy to reform entrenched bureacracies.

AdamKhan.net


Get fed up with me:

The most democratic and fair way of choosing candidates is by committee.

—Avigdor Lieberman