JAIPUR, India—The Amber Fort is the same, the pink buildings still glow in the early morning sun, the hawkers seem unchanged, and so do the elephants. But almost everything else is completely different. Read on »

For the past several days, I have found myself unable to look at the photographs from Haiti. I have also found that when I start reading an article datelined Port-au-Prince, I have to force myself to read to the end of it. Read on »

Somehow he conned the Jordanian secret service into thinking he was its agent. Then he conned the CIA into thinking he was its agent, too. After that, he conned both the Jordanians and the Americans—his “enemies,” he told Al Jazeera—into believing he could track down leaders of al-Qaida. Nevertheless, by far the most intriguing thing about Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi—the suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan two weeks ago—is his wife, Defne Bayrak. Read on »

All you frequent flyers out there know the drill. Take off your shoes, because of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. Remove the hair gel from your backpack, because of the would-be bombers who targeted Heathrow using liquid hydrogen peroxide. When you get on the plane, you must also, from now on, be prepared to remove blankets from your lap before landing—too bad if you’re asleep!—because of the Christmas Day underwear bomber. Read on »

There is no nihilism like the nihilism of a 9-year-old. “Why should I bother?” one of them recently asked me when he was presented with the usual arguments in favor of doing homework. “By the time I’m grown up, the polar ice caps will have melted and everyone will have drowned.” Read on »

A few weeks ago, I found myself walking through a Swiss village — okay, it was really a Geneva suburb — called Nyon. Still, it looked like a village: There was a castle on the hill, and I could see some Roman ruins. There were a few shops and a nice view of the lake. There was no mosque to be seen. There were no women wearing burqas in the carefully landscaped city park. Read on »

Social climbing is an ancient art, one as old as society itself. The character of the high-society impostor — the fake aristocrat, the soi-disant marquis, the “professor” with no degree — has been known in every era, too. Read on »

Like comets hurtling at one another from opposite points in outer space, two different phenomena in different parts of the world soared into public awareness last week. Separately, they might not have had cosmic importance. Put together, however, they could prove an interesting harbinger of things to come. Read on »

Like comets hurtling at one another from opposite points in outer space, two different phenomena in different parts of the world soared into public awareness last week. Separately, they might not have had cosmic importance. Put together, however, they could prove an interesting harbinger of things to come. Read on »

I woke up Monday morning with a sore throat, and mentioned this to a friend. “Swine flu?” he asked, oinking a few times for emphasis. No, as far as I can tell I do not have swine flu, the virus more formally known as H1N1. But even if I did, I’m not sure that anyone around me would take it very seriously. Read on »