Slate

The Senate seems on its way to ratifying the New START on nuclear arms, an achievement that looked unlikely to say the least just a few weeks ago.

If a Republican were president, the accord would have excited no controversy and at most a handful of diehard nays. As even most of its critics conceded, the treaty's text contains nothing objectionable in substance.

"It was depressingly vague," said Maya MacGuineas of the Center for a Responsible Budget. "If the president is going to spend some of his political capital ...

On a recent trip to Israel, I spent some time in the old city of Jerusalem, watching people take photos. It was, on the whole, a fascinating spectacle, one that reminded me of dogs marking their territory. Men and women would approach, say, Jesus' tomb, quickly turn their gaze to the back of their cameras, take a few flash photos, and move on. What struck me was just how like a reflex the whole process was; the act of photography had become almost entirely unconscious.

Fred Kaplan called out John McCain for his stubborn refusal to support the repeal of DADT. Aside from special permission to reenlist, fired gay soldiers ...

The trip's worst day coincides with my 37^th birthday. In the open-air market outside the walls of a 16^th-century Islamic town called Harar, I slip, fall, and scrape my left leg. Among the scrap metal heaps and Quran vendors, my knee starts to bleed, and I begin to cry. It's the mildest of scratches, but the sting and surprise is enough to make the dammed-up tears of a lonely trip fall. I scramble to find my cheap, knockoff sunglasses in my bag. I hate wearing sunglasses. In my embarrassment, I'm glad for them now.

In Greek, Ethiopia means "land of the burnt faces." This name predates A.D. 8, when Ovid recounts this myth in his Metamorphoses: Phaeton, Apollo the sun god's bastard son, confronts his father and takes the reins of his chariot. The sun's horses prove too strong for Phaeton. He loses control and burns the Ethiopians black.

"Ovid on Climate Change"

Ten feet above me on the 600-foot cliff face, the barefoot, buck-toothed monk beckons and grins. He's another one who looks to be nearing 80, but the sun is so strong and feels so close to us that he is probably no older than 50. Anyway, he doesn't know his age. A blue-eyed, black-skinned Ichabod Crane shambling up sheer rock, his limbs are swaddled in white rags. He carries a pared branch as a staff, which he waves around casually as if he is not dangling above a 50-story free fall.

Ambassador Richard Holbrooke valued human relationships so deeply that he believed they could change the world.

For Holbrooke, listening was an elevated art. In public, he willingly waded into the planet's thorniest standoffs. And he solved them. He is best known for his success as chief architect of the Dayton Accords, where he successfully brokered the end of the war in Bosnia in 1995.

In 615, when the Prophet Mohammed was attacked by his own people, he had to flee Mecca. His sermons were threatening the power of the Quraysh, so the tribe wanted him, his family, and his followers killed. Mohammed fled to the Arabian town of Yathrib, 210 miles from Mecca. Today, the town is known as Medina, the Prophet's city.

Judging by the last two weeks, being an enemy of Julian Assange is only marginally less stressful than being Julian Assange. Amazon, PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa, which all moved to cut ties with Assange's WikiLeaks after the site's release of diplomatic cables, have been the targets of distributed denial-of-service attacks from a group that calls itself "Anonymous." There is nothing fancy going on here. DDoS attacks simply aim to send more traffic to a target site than it can handle, slowing it down or making it temporarily unavailable.