So, back in the U.S. with a chance to peruse what is left of American daily print journalism. It is a melancholy activity, indeed. Measured against the sweep of history, the nosedive of U.S. print was an accelerated affair. A decade ago, American newspapers were still making a lot of money and, collectively, were probably […]

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Look anywhere in the world, and you will find more than a few people with wonky teeth. Several of my close relatives have had work done, or should have. It is fairly commonly assumed, in the U.S., at least, that Britons are particularly disinterested in matters dental. Remember Mike Myers as Austin Powers, international man […]

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A bit of a fuss was raised this week over the revelations that the U.S. government can keep records of every phone call made by every U.S. citizen, as well as read their email and internet chats. The New York Times weighed in with an editorial critical of this broad federal power, and some people […]

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The origins of fandom are elusive. Perhaps the most common notion is a kid, hand in hand with his or her father, going to a ball game. It wasn’t quite like that for me in the mid-1960s. My father was not much of a sports fan and I wasn’t pointed at this or that team, […]

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Remember Muammar/Moammar Qaddafi/Gaddafi/Khadafi? Same guy. Multiple ways of spelling his name in various major media. And he was famous, as the dictator who ruled Libya for four decades. Figuring out how to render names in the Arab world is very difficult for the non-Arabic speaking media. Also, deciding which of each person’s several names to […]

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  On April 17, 2008, the first edition of The National rolled off the presses here in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Was it one of the last launches of a sizeable English-language newspaper? So far, it seems it might have been. I am unaware of another newspaper of this size and scope — more than 160 […]

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Rene Douglas wasn’t the best jockey around. He was not Eddie Arcaro, or Bill Shoemaker or Chris McCarron or Gary Stevens. But he was good. Quite good. Good enough to have won more than 3,500 races, including the 1998 Belmont Stakes and the Juvenile Fillies race at the 2006 Breeders’ Cup. Then came a horrific […]

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I wrote about this the other day — the London Times‘s fictional “exclusive” about a huge, world-changing club soccer tournament, the Dream Football League, to be held in Qatar in the height of summer every two years, beginning in 2015. A week later, the former British paper of record, issued what journalists in England call […]

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When a reader finally gets around to his first Alan Furst novel, he or she likely soon will wonder: “Why hadn’t I heard about this guy before?” Furst may be the best writer of “spy” novels who is not a major publishing star nor had one of his books adapted for the screen. He is […]

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Have I written about this? Or just hinted at it? You may have heard that Brits have a different word for about half of all concepts Americans would express in “English” (boot instead of trunk, bonnet instead of hood, tip instead of Dumpster, rubbish instead of trash, lift instead of elevator, ad nauseum) — which […]

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