The politics of living under terrorism

Courtesy: Express Tribune: Khalid Ahmed: Fear guides Pakistan. And this fear emanates from the absence of law and order. In other words, terrorism. Law and order can fluctuate in most Third World states and still not render them dysfunctional. When we say law and order in Pakistan, we mean terrorism coming […]

We Have Entered The Twilight Of The Leisure Class

[This post is published with permission from the personal blog of SEC Senior Policy Advisor Rick Bookstaber.] Conspicuous leisure, conspicuous waste, conspicuous consumption. Veblen coins these terms in Theory of the Leisure Class to describe the strategies the noble and priestly classes employ to assert their status. Veblen observes that a life of leisure is the readiest evidence […]

Stem cell treatment bears fruit

Before treatment, the 51-year-old graphic artist was legally blind, unable to read a single letter on a standard eye chart. She has suffered from Stargardt’s disease, the most common form of macular degeneration in young patients, since she was a teenager, and it was getting progressively worse. A second patient, […]

Muslims and minorities

IMAGINE the following scenario: a complex housing a mosque, a madressah, a girls` school and a home for the elderly being run by a Muslim charity is broken into at dawn and bulldozed by officials. No notice is served, and no documents challenging ownership are produced. Yet, within hours, the buildings […]