Archive for the 'Other News' Category
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities-blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians-will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.
A superb editorial from Harper’s
Posted in Other News, USH: Civil Rights Movement, USH: Immigration, Industrialization and Urbanization | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
When Congress is in session, Michigan Congressman John Conyers holds a regular public meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building, where, if you happen to be interested in health policy, you are welcome to join like-minded citizens in considering the merits of HR 676, also known as The National Health Insurance Bill. If signed into law, HR 676 would require a single payer (the government) to provide health insurance to every American, which is likely why most Americans have never heard of it. Nearly every other wealthy nation has a single-payer system, but in the United States-or at least in Congress-single payer generally is understood to be too utopian, too extreme, and certainly too socialist for domestic consumption.
I was surprised, therefore, when I went to one of the meetings in July and found a hundred or so people stuffed into a stately conference room. Everyone had a notebook, but no one had the bored look of a political reporter. These were activists, young and mostly black or Hispanic. Conyers, along with several guest speakers, sat behind balusters on a low platform that crossed the width of the room. At the other end, near the door, someone had arranged a banquet table potluck style, with tins of homemade brownies and cupcakes. I pushed my way to one of the few remaining chairs in the back as Conyers, now at the lectern and speaking softly into a microphone, asked whether anyone would like to address the gathering.
A fine analysis from Harper’s
Posted in Other News, US GOV: Pol Culture | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Ryan Manelick went to Iraq to join the thousands of fast-buck operators eager to cash in on the U.S. invasion — but he was soon caught up in a web of greed and betrayal. Did the war’s rampant corruption cost him his life?
Read on from Rolling Stone
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Saturday, May 30th, 2009
I am a teenager and often feel powerless when I see problems in the world. My monetary resources are limited, and I already volunteer one day a week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My social circle is broad but not numerous. I am schooled at home, so I can’t even talk to my classmates. Can you think of anything I can do to make a bigger difference?
Read responses
Posted in AP Post AP Seminar, Other News | No Comments »
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
A non-stop full-court press gives weak basketball teams a chance against far stronger teams. Why have so few adopted it?
Gladwell from the New Yorker
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Saturday, May 30th, 2009
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.
Read this brilliant piece from the Atlantic
Posted in Other News | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
In April of 2004, the world first learned that American soldiers in Iraq had abused detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. Images first revealed on CBS and in The New Yorker showed prisoners standing hooded on a box with wires attached to their hands and genitals; piles of naked prisoners stacked into a pyramid; and detainees forced to simulate sexual acts upon one another, often with grinning GIs on hand to point and offer a jaunty thumbs up.
The reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal was swift and bipartisan. Within days, President George W. Bush had offered a public apology for “the terrible and horrible acts,” and his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, took “full responsibility” for the scandal, promising that the offenders would be brought to justice, because the victims “are human beings. They were in U.S. custody. Our country had an obligation to treat them right. We didn’t do that.” With the exception of a handful of outliers—Rush Limbaugh said the abuse was “no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation,” and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., claimed to be “more outraged by the outrage than … by the treatment”—Americans reacted with almost universal surprise and revulsion.
Read On
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Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
In 2004, Google began digitizing the collections of major libraries for a service it calls Google Book Search. Soon after, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers joined forces for a lawsuit on behalf of copyright holders, who were never asked for permission, thank you, and wanted fair compensation.
Well, the parties have since reached a settlement, putting Google in a position to be a modern Library of Alexandria with full texts of millions of titles online. And libraries are free, right? Um, not this one.
Robert Darnton is director of the bricks and mortar Harvard University Library, and he worries about the cost of subscribing to Google Book Search.
Read or listen to this interview from On the Media
Posted in Other News | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
The New York Times‘ David Barstow won a richly deserved Pulitzer Prize yesterday for two articles that, despite being featured as major news stories on the front page of The Paper of Record, were completely suppressed by virtually every network and cable news show, which to this day have never informed their viewers about what Barstow uncovered. Here is how the Pulitzer Committee described Barstow’s exposés:
Awarded to David Barstow of The New York Times for his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.
Read on from Salon
Posted in Other News, US GOV: Public Opinion: Ideology & Socialization | No Comments »
Sunday, February 1st, 2009
Imprisoned three times by the Nigerian government, Chris Abani turned his experience into poems that Harold Pinter called “the most naked, harrowing expression of prison life and political torture imaginable.” His novels include GraceLand (2004) and The Virgin of Flames (2007).
Chris Abani tells stories of people: People standing up to soldiers. People being compassionate. People being human and reclaiming their humanity. It’s “ubuntu,” he says: the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me.
His Ted Talk remains among the best I’ve seen
Posted in AP Nigeria, Other News | No Comments »