by Pat Ryan The wit, wisdom and good humor of that great American philosopher Yogi Berra may be the last...
by Pat Ryan If you think the two-state solution is the annual meeting between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Florida...
The newest addition to the seemingly unending collection of stories that you just can’t make up is the strange case of General Stanley McChrystal, who until this week was the top military man in Afghanistan directing American and NATO combat forces. The general handed his commander in chief a resignation on Wednesday after the public airing of disparaging comments aimed at American civilian leaders. But there is the unanswered question of why he joined a fight he was sure to lose, and a particularly strange part of the story is the battlefield he chose for the losing campaign. Rolling Stone.
by Pat Ryan “How did this happen in Cookeville?” was the question I was asked in both Nashville and Knoxville...
Today we posted "Not on the Cover of the Rolling Stone" among the columns here. For those of a different generation who might not have heard the Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show tune you should take a look and listen.
This week I wrote about politicians’ pandering to voters over possible fears of Islam — opposing mosques and Islamic community...
By Pat Ryan There’s no better place to start writing a column on international affairs than parked in front of...
WOW is right! The 12th Window on the World, Tennessee Tech’s annual global awareness festival that celebrates, at once, international unity and diversity was center stage on campus this weekend. The Roaden University Center, festooned with scores of country flags that symbolize the origins of many Tech students and faculty, was filled with hundreds of people working and thousands of people visiting the music and dance performances, art displays, shopping kiosks, food courts, children’s activities, and country table displays. The atmosphere, as always, was electric as people moved about to take it all in – to enjoy it all and to learn something about every corner of the world.
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.
One of our editorial projects, the Saudi-US Relations Information Service, that we have produced since 2003 was profiled today by "American Bedu" a blog authored by former U.S. diplomat Carol Fleming.