SEATTLE - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs – Silicon Valley and Seattle – and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – I’ve learned three things visiting New Zealand and Australia: There is a place in the world where rugby is front-page news. There is a place in the world – the Auckland airport – where the restrooms have digital clocks in the entryway telling you hourly when they were last cleaned and when they will be cleaned again.

An email came in the other day with a subject line that I couldn’t ignore. It was from the oil economist Phil Verleger, and it read: “Should the United States join OPEC?” That I had to open.

Sadly, the transitional government in Egypt appears determined to shoot itself in both feet.

Watching the Syrian Army pummel the Syrian town of Homs to put down the rebellion there against the regime of President Bashar Assad is the remake of a really bad movie that starred Bashar’s father, Hafez, exactly 30 years ago this month. I know. I saw the original.

MOSCOW – To observe the democratic awakenings happening in places such as Egypt, Syria and Russia is to travel with a glow in your heart and a pit in your stomach.

Memo to: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev

In an essay in the latest issue of The Atlantic, titled “Making It in America,” author Adam Davidson relates a joke from cotton country about just how much a modern textile mill has been automated:

A few items came across the desk last week that underscore the challenge America faces in making policy toward the Islamist parties that are emerging as the early beneficiaries of the uprisings across the Arab world.