The singe most important element of negotiation is preparation. Usually the best negotiators are those who do the best preparation. And normally preparation requires some preparation. So successful negotiators do not only a lot of preparatory work but also prepare themselves to such a preparation.

I have a problem to understand why dental service is so expensive in the US. I don’t find any reasonable arguments why one has to pay $115 for seeing a dentist just for a few minutes or even seconds. Or to pay about $2000 for one dental crown. Maybe some people understand this but I don’t. Will be happy if someone could explain this to me.

Modern scholars face a very difficult problem of dealing with a huge number of scholarly literature they have to use in their work. On the one hand, they ought to make original points and arguments but on the other hand, they have to know and refer to other sources. But “the other sources” are so enormous that one risks to spend whole his or her life studying fellow colleagues’ articles and books. I remember once my own article was turned down by a journal whose referee had found that I didn’t mention one particular work. Well, I even didn’t know the name of that author. Continue reading “The tragedy and fascination of modern scholarship” →

In its January 2012 issue, “Foreign Policy” (magazine) published the lists of the world’s 10 best International Relations Masters and Undergraduate Programs: Continue reading “The Best International Relations Masters and Undergraduate Programs” →

I’ve just watched on C-SPAN TV-channel Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s appearance at the Economic Club of Washington, DC. Very interesting talk, a lot of insights on new technologies in the modern world. One of his expressions especially struck me: “information poverty”. No doubt: wealth of nation increasingly will be related to the availability of information. Those who will have information poverty will stay on sidelines of history.

I noticed that most people who work or study in universities, especially in Western universities are liberal minded individuals. Interesting: do they go to the universities because of their liberal mind, or are they become liberal minded because of the university setting?

Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum begin their recently published book (That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011) with stating President Obama’s words: “It makes no sense to China to have better rail system than us, and Singapore having better airports than us. And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth – that used to be us” (November 3, 2010).

Indeed, currently many other countries might impress the world with better achievements in different areas. For example, nowadays not American but overseas schoolchildren usually win international mathematic Olympiads. However, I think, the best American universities are still the best in the world. In my opinion the following eleven factors contribute to this situation. Continue reading “On the strengths of the best American Universities” →

Earlier today I accidentally met two wonderful women at Starbucks. I took my coffee and sat at the table where they’re already sitting with their cups of coffee. We started chatting and I learned that one of them was 96 and the second was 90. I’d never sought that they might be so old since both women looked much younger, spoke well and demonstrated very good memory and sense of reality. It was really nice to see such lively longevity and I was impressed. Continue reading “Powerful advice on how to live a long and happy life” →

Be prepared for the next step: you have a whole life to learn things.

Anyone can earn a lot of certificates but two of them would be the most important: a birth certificate and a death certificate.