Patrick Ryan

Patrick Ryan

  • Joined: August 9, 2010
  • Articles: 64
  • Comments: 2

The World Comes to Cookeville

A wise man once told me that it’s much easier to sell people something “they think they want” than something “you think they need.” That dictum is especially apropos to the task of global affairs awareness – teaching people about the world. We are a nation awash in information resources that offer an endless stream of raw data, context and analyses of the world around us but most Americans are content to leave understanding foreign affairs, our interests abroad and international things to someone else.

Stop the Clock

The “Doomsday Clock” is not really a timepiece. It is a metaphor marking civilization’s proximity to a self-induced conclusion adopted by scientists at the dawn of the Cold War. In 1947 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the clock’s makers, set the time at 11:53 p.m., reflecting the danger of nuclear weapons, the sole province, at the time, of the United States. By 1953 with the introduction of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union and testing of more powerful thermonuclear weapons by both America and Russia, the clock nudged to just two minutes away from humanity’s midnight.

Health Care You Can Believe In

by Pat Ryan It was an odd convergence of events that struck me as I was driving across Monterey Mountain in the snow last week. President Obama was hosting the health care “summit” in Washington and I was keeping up…

Cold War on Ice

by Pat Ryan Are you getting tired of the long, cold winter around here? Just consider the long, cold winter it’s going to be for the 2010 Russian Olympic officials who can hear the wolves back home howling for their…

Closing in on Midnight With Iran

by Pat Ryan Like most things in the Middle East the impending train wreck in the Persian Gulf that is America’s confrontation with Iran is complicated. It is one more scenario where there are innumerable consequences to American action, or…

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Now in Cookeville

by Pat Ryan “How did this happen in Cookeville?” was the question I was asked in both Nashville and Knoxville when, almost three years ago, I described the newly founded Tennessee World Affairs Council to university professors and civic leaders…