This post is part of a series about my trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. See the full itinerary. Since the fall of the iron curtain, tourists worldwide have streamed in to Prague to view lovely medieval edifices, drink pilsner, and appreciate Art Nouveau and Cubism. The historical political center of the extinct Kingdom of Bohemia lies in… Read more →
I recently spotted a friend wearing a shirt with the phrase “Heaps Good” superimposed over the state of South Australia. What caught my eye is that the state looks remarkably like the District of Columbia in the United States. In fact, if you scale down and rotate South Australia by 45°, it’s hard to tell the two jurisdictions apart. One… Read more →
I biked to the U.S. Supreme Court on April 28 to observe the crowd outside. The justices had just heard oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, a case to decide if state bans on same-sex marriage violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Whatever the court decides, it will be a landmark ruling. The Supreme… Read more →
I arrived at the Federal court in DC at 8:30 only to learn that my jury duty had been cancelled at the last minute— the parties settled Sunday night. As a consolation for waking up early, I got to walk through the William Bryant Annex, designed by the late Michael Graves and finished in 2005. Graves, who died last month,… Read more →
Forbes ranked America’s richest counties. Number one on their list is the tiny Virginia city of Falls Church, which is not a county. Besides illustrating the folly of reading top-10 lists, this ranking also illustrates Virginia’s unique arrangement of counties and cities, an arrangement dating back to the 19th century. In 1871, the commonwealth created a municipal classification system in which… Read more →
In the U.S., federal government spending is split into two categories: mandatory spending and discretionary spending. These terms are misleading since all mandatory spending can be changed by statute and some discretionary spending is mandated by the Constitution. Mandatory spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of all federal spending, covers federally funded social insurance and welfare programs like Social Security,… Read more →
This post is part of a series about my trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. See the full itinerary. The eastern German city of Dresden is a site of both breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking tragedy. Dresden suffered one of the deadliest bombing campaigns in Europe in World War II. In February 1945, Allied air raids leveled 1,600 acres of… Read more →
The dreaded selfie is the latest example of the narcissistic self-promotion that degrades modern life. The Washington Post once described the selfie as “that embattled crux of a hundred quiet culture wars.” If this is a war, sensible people should sue for peace and declare the selfie a crime against human dignity. The most egregious warriors of selfiedom should pay reparations to everyone who… Read more →
This post is part of a series about my trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. See the full itinerary. Cologne is one of several west German cities that dot the Rhine. The city’s name is a corruption of Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, the name of the original colony the Romans established in the first century. Roman ruins still remain under… Read more →
This is the first post in a series about my trip to Europe in the summer of 2014. See the full itinerary. In a flat section of northern Europe, the Amstel flows slowly northward toward the sea. Settlers in the 1170s dammed the river, thus creating the Aemstelredamme (Amstel dam) and the city of Amsterdam was born. Over centuries the modest… Read more →