Why the regnum dei won't happen ... In the latest New York Review of Books, Thomas Gray takes Tom Friedman to task for his "World is Flat" meme. Gray is very much an intellectual heir of Isaiah Berlin, so his rebuke is hardly surprising. But what is unexpected is that in the process of reproving Friedman, Gray ends up writing one of the best essays on the meaning of globalization --particularly how it is neither a utopian nor distopian process -- that I've ever come across.

Definitely check it out if you get a chance.