Spring 2011 Glenn Fellows Arrive D.C.

Photographed in Union Station, from left to right: Erika Dackin, Leah Tingley, Dara Doss, Katie Contino, Jamie Clow.

Internships begin Tuesday, March 29.

2011 Mellon Lectures Feature Mary Beard

Mary Beard, a Cambridge scholar who writes accessible essays on ancient Greece and Rome, delivered the first of six lectures this afternoon at the National Gallery of Art. She can be counted on to comment insightfully on the aspirations of Washington, D.C., which has more than its fair share of classically inspired monuments and temples. Phillip Kennicott previewed the lecture series in yesterday's Washington Post. There is a schedule for the lectures at the end of Kennicott's article.

Pictured above the Patent Office in D.C., the Pantheon in Rome, and Greenough's statue of George Washington in a toga.

Great Planning Disasters

Years ago Peter Hall--now Sir Peter Hall--wrote a book about the "pathology of planning" that demonstrates how easy it is for experts to underestimate both the costs associated with mega-projects and the likelihood that something will go terribly wrong. Now that we are witnessing the slow-motion meltdown of nuclear reactors in Japan, it is hard not to ask the question posed by Steven Pearlstein in yesterday's Post, "The Costly Lessons from the Long Tail of Improbable Disaster." The question, as put by Pearlstein, is why we continue to underestimate the frequency of and severity of calamitous events--both natural and man-made--and how we can learn to live with a more realistic appraisal of risk. One suspects that, as President Reagan used to say, there are no easy answers--simple answers, maybe, but no easy answers.

An Exemplary Public Servant Turns 80

In my pantheon of public service, Alice Rivlin is enshrined along with such rock stars as John Glenn, Bob Gates, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Here is the tribute by Stan Collender that appeared in yesterday's Roll Call.

March 10, 2011, update: This is slightly off-topic, but in his Federal Diary yesterday Joe Davidson discussed the importance of training opportunities in the federal service, and specifically in the foreign service. Note the plaintive reference to former Senator George V. Voinovich and also to the recent GAO study of State Department training.

Washington Is Bad at Scheming

Years ago I wrote a book called Big Plans: The Allure and Folly of Urban Design. The point was The Rationality Project overrates the efficacy of planning and underrates the virtues of improvisation and serendipity.

In today's Washington Post blog, Ezra Klein makes essentially the same case about how things get done, or don't get done, in our nation's capital. Everything would be so much more comprehensible if only the conspirators would get their act together. Ain't gonna happen.

Volcano of Rage

The March 24 issue of The New York Review of Books has an insightful piece on recent events in Tunisia and Egypt. I thought it significant that the author, Max Rodenbeck, analyzes these events largely without referring to the United States, and that he doesn't really get to the question of what regime change in the Arab world means for us.

March 5 update (with thanks to Kyle Everett): Here, David Brooks reflects on Samuel Huntington's Crisis of Civilizations thesis in light of recent events in North Africa and the Middle East.

March 9 update: In the March 24, 2011, issue of The New York Review of Books, Perry Link writes about Facebook and Twitter and the way that events in the Middle East have been received in China.