Welcome!

Hello to anyone who clicked on over here from Waq al-Waq.   This is my new blog, and I hope you'll check it out and make yourself at home.  I want to start by thanking everyone who made Waq al-Waq such an exciting, vibrant and rewarding place.  You guys challenged us and focused our thinking.  I'll miss it deeply, but I hope this can fill the void.  This is a much broader forum, which will allow me to go from being a Yemen-only "expert" to the more natural ground of a Yemen-obsessed dilettante.  Also there will probably be more swearing. There will still be many, many Yemen posts, perhaps even the majority.  And of course, Greg has a standing invitation to post his unsurpassed expertise whenever the mood strikes.

But I hope you'll give this a chance, and maybe tell your friends and neighbors.  If you are interested in national or international politics, literature, Chicago or science you might find something you like as we move forward.  The comments are always open, and it is my goal to make this a place where you can find a discussion on something that may interest you.  If I can get somewhere near the always astonishingly high-level of comments we had at the old place, I'll be happy.

Thanks for checking it out, and I hope to see you around.

Brian