Free Republic

When foreigners say Bangalore is India's version of Silicon Valley, the high-tech office park called Electronics City is what they're often thinking of. But however much Californians might hate traffic-clogged Route 101, the main drag though the Valley, it has nothing on Hosur Road. This potholed, four-lane stretch of gritty pavement -- the primary access to Electronics City -- is pure chaos. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, cows, donkeys, and dogs jostle for every inch of the roadway as horns blare and brakes squeal. Drivers run red lights and jam their vehicles into any available space, paying no mind...

The Times columnist does foreign policy punditry by clichéOn May 11, Thomas Friedman, America’s most influential foreign affairs columnist, began his twice-weekly New York Times op-ed this way: “In his book ‘The Ideas That Conquered the World,’ Michael Mandelbaum tells a story about a young girl who is eating dinner at a friend’s house and her friend’s mother asks her if she likes brussels sprouts. ‘Yes, of course,’ the girl says. ‘I like brussels sprouts.’ After dinner, though, the mother notices that the girl hasn’t eaten a single sprout. ‘I thought you liked brussels sprouts,’ the mother said. ‘I do,’...

Thomas L. Friedman. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 488 pages. $27.50 One of the most enjoyable things about researching this book,” writes Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in his new book The World is Flat, “has been discovering all sorts of things happening in the world around me of which I had no clue.” Indeed, this account is full of eye-popping discoveries of a world that is much altered in the past decade, a kind of primer on the revolution in information technology, or it, that has...