This is our second “best of counterweights 2011” list, as promised (or threatened may be the better word?) – compiled by X and I, as we recurrently toast the season in this otherwise deserted office, complete with a fake holiday tree, and several boxes of excellent seasonal cookies, left behind by the den mother by […]

[UPDATED MARCH 17, 2012] : At first I wasn’t sure just what to make of our autumn 2011 holiday trip to Silicon Valley, in the (despite everything else) still aptly named Golden State of the USA today. Then I bumped into two recent articles in the online edition of Foreign Policy magazine: “The Myth of […]

The death of the unusually influential American social scientist Seymour Martin Lipset, on December 31, 2006, prompted a wave of admiring obituaries in January 2007. Canadians could also join in on this party, because as CNN’s Bill Schneider explained, “Lipset’s ideas were so compelling” that he could even “make Canada interesting to Americans.” As others […]