Timothy Kudo | Washington Post | 25 January 2013 Marine captain on the moral dilemma of war. "As I got closer to deploying to war in 2009, my lethal abilities were refined, but my ethical understanding of killing was not. I held two seemingly contradictory beliefs: Killing is always wrong, but in war, it is necessary. How could something be both immoral and necessary?" Bill Gates | Wall Street Journal | 25 January 2013 "You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal. This may seem basic, but it is amazing how often it is not done and how hard it is to get right. Historically, foreign aid has been measured in terms of money invested, not by how well it performed in actually helping people" Wolfgang Munchau | Financial Times | 27 January 2013 Why stay in the EU, if you don't what to join the euro? That's the question Britain has to ask itself. There used to be a simple answer: the UK needs the Single Market. But in another ten years — the time frame for Britain's decision — the Single Market may be history, superseded by a eurozone economic union and a transatlantic free-trade zone Michael Kinsley | New Republic | 27 January 2013 Famed ex-editor returns, shares memories, remarks on changes. "It's 36 years since I first worked for The New Republic, 23 years since the last time I wielded the editor's scythe, and 17 years since I have written for the magazine regularly. The last time I resigned as editor, the current editor-in-chief and owner was five years old" Jesse Lichtenstein | Esquire | 22 January 2013 Admiring portrait of the US Postal Service and its workers. They handle almost half of all the mail on earth. They connect every American to every other American. Yes, it costs a lot of money, and you can send most things by email. But the postal service is part of the social fabric, especially in rural areas. Privatisation is the wrong answer Jeff Gordinier | New York Times | 23 January 2013 Hip New York cheesemongers pen product pitches that leave the wine trade standing. Here's the Bedford Cheese Shop on an Italian ewe's cheese: "The Lindsay Lohan of the cheese world, this pecorino has a tan, leathery exterior that surrounds a delicate yellow paste. With hints of herbs and the aroma of hay, you can almost hear the bleating" Thought for the day: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language" — Ludwig Wittgenstein
| 
