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Question on Tikkun Olam

What is the Muslim equivalent? I know we have one, it’s embedded in our conception of khalifa. But do we have something as pithy? I ask, because now must repair. Now we must heal. The world is un-wrought, it is distraught, it is with anger fraught.

International Observers

Joi Ito found a good article on the International Herald Tribune about what international observers are saying about our election process…. I don’t do it because I have affiliation to another country (unless we finally get the New York succession movement going), but because I have friends and family overseas, I like to travel and because of work and research.

The Beginning of the End

The October 2006 issue of Vanity Fair contains two important articles, which are worth reading: Empire Falls, by Niall Ferguson, and Under Egypt’s Volcano, by Scott Anderson. In Empire Falls, Fergusson uses historian Edward Gibbon’s theories on the decline and fall of Rome to make an interesting, if not convincing, case for the same state of conditions currently in play in the West. Gibbon’s blamed Rome’s decline on external military overreach, internal corruption, social decadence, religious transformation, and barbarian invasion. Fergusson counters with the War on Terror, the cult of personality, superficiality, reality TV, cultural decline, immigration, and the rise…