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The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower Hardcover – February 3, 2015 by Michael Pillsbury (Author) One of the U.S. government’s leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country’s rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world’s leading superpower. For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China’s rise will bring us cooperation,...

Rod McKuen, a ubiquitous poet, lyricist and songwriter whose work met with immense commercial success if little critical esteem, died on Thursday in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 81... Mr. McKuen, whom The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture described as having been, at his height, “the unofficial poet laureate of America,” was the author of dozens of books of poetry, which together sold millions of copies...

Colleen McCullough, a former neurophysiological researcher at Yale who, deciding to write novels in her spare time, produced “The Thorn Birds,” a multigenerational Australian romance that became an international best seller and inspired a hugely popular television mini-series, died on Thursday on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, where she had made her home for more than 30 years. She was 77.

So here it is…drumroll…spying factoid #2…Spying was big business during the Cold War and was deemed important enough by the Soviets for them to construct exact replicas of small U.S. towns within their borders in order to properly train their spies. One such town was Vinnytsia in what is now Ukraine. In these towns, spies in training would buy groceries from a 7-Eleven, watch U.S. television and talk only in English. Once their training was complete, many would head to places like Finland to see if they could pass as Americans before finally being stationed in the States. From my...

Recently I saw a live performance of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", a story about two hobos who are, oddly enough loitering around waiting for a visit from a person named Godot. They are interrupted by Pozzo, a cruel and pompous man, and Lucky, his hapless slave led by a noose around his neck. Lucky performs demeaning tasks on command. At the urging of the hobos, Pozzo commands him to dance, and then to "think". What follows is a run-on rambling speech/rant lasting about four minutes of half-developed themes, nonsequeteurs, stuttering, random interjections, and entertaining nonsense. Here is the link...

Many of my fellow conservatives love Ayn Rand. And many of my liberal friends love to hate her. You can understand why progressives enjoy blasting Rand's presumably nefarious influence on the conservative movement. She makes for a convenient punching bag for progressives, because she embodies the caricatured version of what progressives imagine conservatives really think: that egotism and greed are good and that the parasitic weak deserve to be trod upon by the capitalistic powerful. And then there are people like me: Conservatives who view themselves as Christians first. To us, Rand's worldview is repellent, and the fact that her...

Veteran actor Brian Blessed collapsed on stage with an apparent heart problem while playing King Lear. The 78-year-old had just started delivering his lines at the start of the Shakespearean tragedy when he fainted, toppled off a raised platform and fell heavily, his crown rolling to a halt at the front of the stage. Fellow actor Noel White, playing the Earl of Kent, announced quietly: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is not part of the play. Is there a doctor in the house?’ Indeed there was. A barely conscious Mr Blessed, flat on his back and surrounded by worried cast members...

Attachment disorder is the inability to form loving and lasting relationships, to give or receive love or affection, form a conscience, or trust others. Attachment difficulties are on a continuum of disturbance that range from attachment issues all the way to attachment disorder. Attachment disorder falls under many names and categories. In children, these names include: Reactive attachment disorder or RAD Oppositional defiant disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder Childhood trauma PDD Pervasive development delay In adults, these names include: Borderline personality Histrionic personality Antisocial personality Narcissistic personality Dependent personality Obsessive-compulsive disorder

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Ray Bradbury lived in his 1937 Cheviot Hills home for more than 50 years. After the author of "Fahrenheit 451" died in 2012, the house was readied for sale ... The home, which was purchased in June for $1.765 million, is being demolished. A permit for demolition was issued Dec. 30, Curbed LA reports, and a fan who visited the house over the weekend found it in the process of being torn down ...

Apple's iBooks platform is seeing an average of a million new users per week after the company's decision to ship iOS 8 with the app pre-installed, according to Apple Director of iBooks Keith Moerer, who spoke today at the Digital Book World Conference. efore iOS 8, the iBooks app had to be searched for and downloaded from the App Store, putting it on par with several other App Store-based e-books apps like Amazon's Kindle app for iOS. Pre-installing iBooks made it "so easy" for new users to try iBooks for the first time, said Moerer. Family Sharing, also new in...

Patricia Launneborg’s book Abortion: a Positive Decision is a difficult book for a pro-lifer to read. As the title indicates, it presents abortion in the most positive light possible, sugarcoating the decision and praising women who have abortions. One especially eye-opening quote comes from a clinic worker who says (emphasis mine): In Spain every single abortion is done under local [anesthesia]. It’s walk in, walk out. They come in at 4 clock, by 5 o’clock they have had the operation, the consultation, and are back home. And I was so impressed by it. I said, it’s not possible! I wouldn’t...

Actress and author Lena Dunham joined Bill Simmons on his podcast, The B.S. Report, to discuss the controversy and amount of pushback she received for her book, Not That Kind of Girl, when she aimed a comment at “conservative white men.” She suggested that conservatives were attempting to smear her politically by using her words from within her book at the same time she launched a Planned Parenthood campaign and again right before the midterm elections. “I don’t care what conservative white men think about me. But I do care if anything I write is painful for survivors of sexual...

Over lunch one day, a co-worker grumbled about something being "v. annoying." It took a second for me to understand what the quick, consonant blip pre-adjective was, and when my brain processed it, I realized something: Yet again, we'd contextualized Internet slang into a colloquialism. Or was it as new-fangled as it seemed? OMG, after all, the classic abbreviation—used by squealing pre-teens, shocked parents, and everyone in between to evoke a three-syllabic exclamation of emotions ranging from surprise to ironic excitement—was one of the original text acronyms to be translated from cellphone screen to language (remember those "scandalous" Gossip Girl...

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will publish a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed along with the words "All is forgiven" Wednesday on the cover of its first issue since Islamist militants killed 12 people at its central Paris offices. In a further show of defiance, the fearless magazine announced it would print three million copies – not the usual 60,000 – when it reappears on newsstands on Wednesday. It will also be translated into six languages including English, Arabic and Turkish, editor-in-chief Gérard Biard told a Paris news conference Tuesday. Daily newspaper Libération, which hosted Charlie Hebdo staff as...

Laura Ingalls Wilder is legendary. Her "Little House on the Prairie" series, based on her family's adventures on the Midwestern frontier, have sold more than 41 million copies in the U.S. and have been translated into more than 40 languages. The books spawned a long-running television show and, in 2008, a stage musical. Millions of readers have been captivated by Wilder's childhood on the prairie, but her newest book, "Pioneer Girl," released more than 50 years after her death, offers a new perspective. Annotated with exceptional detail by Pamela Smith Hill, "Pioneer Girl" is Wilder's autobiography, unpublished until now. Hill's...

Skyfall has been labelled “nonsense” by Anthony Horowitz. The author, who is writing a new James Bond novel himself, has admitted he was unimpressed by the latest movie in the famous franchise. While Skyfall, which saw Daniel Craig take on the role of 007 for a third time, was a box office hit, Anthony admits he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

Miep Gies, the last survivor among Anne Frank’s protectors and the woman who preserved the diary that endures as a testament to the human spirit in the face of unfathomable evil, died Monday night, the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam said. She was 100. The BBC said Mrs. Gies suffered a fall late last month and died at a nursing home. “I am not a hero,” Mrs. Gies wrote in her memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” published in 1987. “I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more —...

This is a vanity; a whimsy that I came up with tonight. IF you were going to send a rocket into outer space, that included a little package containing all of the things that YOU wanted to preserve for posterity and communicate to extraterrestrials that might be out there, What would you send? I thought of a few things; not a complete list by far, and not in any particular order (except for the first four ;-) 1. The Holy Bible - OT, NT, Tanakh 2. The Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States of America 3....

Live Action contributor Lauren Enriquez wrote an article a week ago about pro-choice author Magda Denes. Denes, who survived Nazi Germany, held on to a pro-choice viewpoint even when confronted with the horrors of abortion while researching her book, In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death in an Abortion Hospital. Her book, though written many years ago, reveals some basic truths about abortion. Here are some quotes from the book that illustrate key points. Abortion takes lives Denes quotes three different abortion doctors. One says: When you do a D & C most of the tissue is removed by the...

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either...

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows. He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell." On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail. If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see; It...

While reporting on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, journalist Steven Brill was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition that required heart surgery. "There I was: a reporter who had made hospital presidents and hospital executives and health care executives and insurance executives sweat because I asked them all kinds of questions about their salaries and about their profit margins," Brill tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "And now I was lying on a gurney in a hospital in real fear of my life." Brill had a bubble on his heart that the doctors said had a 15 to 17 percent...

The authors of a new book on how we can save our century point out that the culture of death that allows abortion also leads to genocide. Suzanne Hamner has an interesting piece over at BarbWire about the book, which we have reproduced in part. A link to the full article is included. Hamner writes, Would you say that mankind is progressing, growing wiser with the passing of time and getting better or would you say that mankind is regressing, growing ever more destructive with the passing of time and becoming worse than in previous historical times? If you said...

Joel Rosenberg begins a new and exciting suspense series, The Third Target scheduled for early release January 6 due to rapid moving events the story reflects. Multiple themes of prophecy, biological and chemical warfare, the rise of ISIS and radical jihadists offers the author's fictionalized view of how real the threat is.

France's most notorious and internationally best-known novelist Michel Houellebecq insisted Saturday that his new book “Submission”, which envisions a future France ruled by a Muslim government, is not a far-right racist scare story. “Submission”, which is released in French on Wednesday, has been the subject of intense debate in recent weeks, particularly for its portrayal of Islam. In 2001 Houellebeck described Islam as “the stupidest of all religions”, a position he has since vocally distanced himself from. But his latest book has stirred criticism from all quarters and been attacked widely by the French media and on social media. France’s...

As a person who has written on Tolkien for almost fifteen years and read Tolkien for thirty-six years, I am often asked about his political views. In a sense, this is a funny question, as Tolkien really despised most politics. In fact, he really thought of himself as very anti-political. His few statements on the matter reveal just how unpolitical and apolitical and anti-political he could be. It is also, however, a natural question for someone to ask about the great man, as we live in a highly politicized age. So, what do we know? First, Tolkien was a conservative...

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich.,- A Michigan university said its 40th annual list of "banished" words includes "bae," "polar vortex," "hack," "skill set," "swag," and "foodie." Lake Superior State University said its annual "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness" was chosen by members of a committee from submissions by the public. Topping the list this year was "bae," a term of endearment that came into common use this year. "Meaning 'before anyone else.' How stupid! Stop calling your boyfriend 'bae,'" Evie Dunagan of Manheim, Pa., wrote in submitting the word for banishment. LSSU...

The publisher describes Ben Metcalf’s “Against the Country” as a “gift for fans of Southern Gothic and metafiction,” which sounds like a final exam question for Venn diagrammers. Having survived this mind-numbing rant of a novel, I only know that it’s a gift I would not open again. And yet I entered these dark woods eagerly. For many years, Metcalf was the literary editor of Harper’s, where he published some of the finest writers in the world and, a few times, offered his own essays in that magazine and in the Baffler. They were remarkable performances: angry, erudite pieces delivered...

I realize that Doonesbury is nothing more than liberal pap designed to make Baby Boomers feel good about themselves—yes, yes, Garry Trudeau, Republicans are squares and warmongers, we get it, you’re from the 60s, get out, back to the 60s, there’s no place for you here in the future!—but even still, this weekend’s strip is pretty egregiously terrible. Check it out, it’ll only take you a couple of seconds to read. If you don’t want to read it, allow me to describe it to you. One of the characters, a mom, is telling her daughter than she’s not allowed to...

I just bought this book yesterday. It looks like it may be an interesting history of the Mediterranean area countries around the 10th century. But after having read the 10 page introduction (in which he mentions other books written on the subject, which he says may have been biased towards one religion or another), I'm not sure if I want to invest time in this book. He seems to lean a bit towards the Muslims. I would like to read an unbiased account. Is this it?

At our annual extended family Christmas gathering my nephew was given "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun", by Paul Barrett. His mother gave him the book having heard "all about it on NPR". Naturally my sister-in-law is all about hard left politics and gun control. My nephew, a high school senior, is in total lockstep. After he'd been reading it for a few hours I asked him if there was a coupon in the back for range time. I wondered aloud 'why just read about something you just as easily put in your hands and experience'. The look on this...

The Husband and I just finished the obligatory, annual viewing of George C. Scott in "A Christmas Carol". (That's my husband's favorite; I sort of favor the Patrick Stewart version....) The story never fails to move me. Whenever we attempt to get outside of our 'small' selves, and extend love toward others, we grow, and make ourselves more fit for the Kingdom. God Bless us Every One; and a Very Merry Christmas, to all Freepers. All of you have taught me, and inspired me, over many years - even though I only 'joined-up' and began posting a short while ago....

A CHRISTMAS STORY TO REMEMBER It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn't been enough money to buy me the rifle that I'd wanted for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Pa wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible. After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry...

Link only per The New Yorker copyright complaint: Ayn Rand Reviews Children's Movies

In any case, Skype's Translator and its rivals have some way to go before they can match the abilities of a skilled human linguist. You would not want them involved in vital negotiations between world leaders for example. But over the next decade, you can expect to chat to friends whose language you don't share without stopping to flick through a dictionary.

My husband and I saw a TV news segment about Common Core this evening, and the strange way it appears to teach mathematics. Somehow, we started talking about how we learned to read and write. I can't remember much at all; I seemed to just 'absorb' it somehow. I recall learning to sing the ABCs (a good way to learn the letters) and I recall learning to write the letters. But I don't recall anything about the technique that was used to teach me to actually recognize words and read. (This would have been in the late-1950's, early 1960's.) Does...

Atticus Finch is a monster. Sure, he’s one of history’s most beloved literary characters (he was even played by Gregory Peck in a film adaptation) but he’s also, to use the parlance of our time, history’s greatest rape apologist. Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee and pundit, first observed Finch’s new standing in the world on Twitter in early December:

With a win against the estate of late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle behind him, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura now has his sights on HarperCollins, the publisher of the bestselling memoir "American Sniper." Ventura filed a lawsuit Monday against the New York publisher, alleging the publicity generated by the book with a "false and defamatory" segment "substantially increased sales of 'American Sniper,' thereby generating millions of dollars in revenues and profits for Harper Collins." HarperCollins does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said Tuesday. A federal jury in St. Paul found in July that a segment of the...

A US judge Monday expressed doubt towards the government's e-book antitrust case against Apple, saying the tech giant was challenging "predatory" pricing from rival Amazon. The comments came as a federal appeals court panel heard arguments in the case, in which Apple was found to have colluded with publishers to raise e-book prices. Apple argues that its entry into the e-book market fostered competition because it challenged Amazon, which had a dominant share in e-books. Apple claims its entry spurred additional publishers to produce e-books, and that prices of e-books generally fell even though it concedes that some prices rose...

A funny thing happened in school today. Not funny ha-ha but funny as in bizarre and unexpected. Funny as in funny money. And not just today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Every day. Every time a school teaches reading in a way that doesn't work. That's funny, right? You teach reading but somehow nobody learns to read? How funny can you get? And not just in any one school. No, this epic lack of progress is happening everywhere. Point to a school and you're probably looking at a dead zone literacy-wise. That's funny, right? A school's first job is to teach kids to...

The primary job of the Solicitor General’s office is to argue cases before the Supreme Court. Why is it taking Amazon’s side on this appeal? Here’s a surprise. The e-book antitrust trial that went so badly against Apple two years ago is headed to an appeals court Monday and there’s a new name on the docket. Arguing for the U.S., alongside the lawyers for the antitrust division who handled the trial, will be Malcom Stewart, one of the biggest guns in the office of the U.S. Solicitor General. For the Solicitor General’s office to argue a case at this level...

You don't need a bed to have a bedbug problem. A librarian could tell you that, especially if the librarian works at the Ethel M. Gordon Oakland Park Library, which has been closed since Thursday to combat an infestation there. Patrons at the public computer terminals there started complaining they were being bitten. Bedbugs have infested libraries throughout the country, to the point some even use bedbug-sniffing dogs to track down potential problems. The reason: there are so many people spending time in the buildings, it's easy for someone to unknowingly carry in the bugs on their clothing from an...

RUSH: Look at this Lena Dunham situation. Lena Dunham, who was a heroine to the pop culture in this country, she's an absolute star. She's got this HBO show called Girls, so popular, so hip, so cool that Obama used her in a campaign commercial in the War on Women back in 2012. What is she, 17 years old? I know she's in her twenties. She's got an autobiography. Oh, yes, she has an autobiography. You know what the prominent event in her autobiography is? Yeah, she was raped by a conservative Republican. Right. She was raped by a conservative...

Yesterday we covered the ongoing soap opera of the immensely unattractive and monumentally untalented Lena Dunham’s bogus rape accusation. Long story short: she accused a college classmate of raping her, she clearly identified the alleged rapist which has caused him a lot of difficulties, now her publisher is paying the man’s legal expenses and altering future editions of the book to emphasize that the name is a pseudonym. Basically, this is the type of careless and narcissistic behavior Dunham has raised to an art form. Now she takes to the friendly pages of journalistic paragon BuzzFeed to continue to push...

Now that the midterm elections are finally over, we turn now to the important work in December: list making. What were the biggest stories of 2014? Who were the biggest winners and losers in politics? Which 19 cats best depict the state of budgetary debate in the US? And of course, we await with bated breath the selection of Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Last year the honor went to Pope Francis, but this year the pontiff will find himself eclipsed by, er … Ferguson protesters?

Best New ArtistIggy Azalea Bastille Brandy Clark Haim Sam SmithSong of the YearAll About That Bass – Meghan Trainor (Kevin Kadish, Meghan Trainor) Chandelier – Sia – (Sia Furler, Jesse Shatkin) Shake it Off – Taylor Swift – (Max Martin, Shellback, Taylor Swift) Stay With Me (Darkchild Version) – (James Napier, William Phillips, Sam Smith) Take Me to Church – Hozier – (Andrew Hozier-Byrne)Record of the YearFancy – Iggy Azalea – Fancy Chandelier – Sia – Chandelier Stay With Me (Darkchild Version) – Sam Smith Shake it Off – Taylor Swift All About That Bass – Meghan TrainorBest Pop Vocal...

The first Ayn Rand novel since the iconic "Atlas Shrugged" was published in 1957 will be released in hardcover and paperback on July 7, the New American Library, which is associated with Penguin Random House, announced Thursday. Rand wrote the book, "Ideal" as a novel at first, but shelved the manuscript when she was not satisfied with it, and later rewrote it as a stage play. The play itself didn’t have its New York premiere until 2010, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Peter Jackson has said he won't be making anymore movies based on J. R. R. Tolkien's work, because the estate won't let him. SNIP The writer's son Christopher, who was appointed by his father as his literary executor, said that he was disappointed by the way the movies had diluted the artistry of the novels. He told Le Monde in 2012: 'Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time. 'The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work and what it has become has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has...

Since Peter Pan’s first adventures to Neverland in 1904, by way of the Duke of York’s Theatre in London, his story has been retold in countless variations on stage, page, and screen. More recent versions, including tonight's Peter Pan Live! on NBC, have been rewritten in attempts to unburden the text of its disturbing racial stereotypes. Peter himself has also been reincarnated many times over. Where his Edwardian roots cast him as an impish child, still with all his baby teeth, contemporary storytellers envision a prepubescent boy physically and emotionally tottering on the edge of teenagedom—that stepping stone to adulthood...