Most of us have seen the photo of the helicopter leaving the embassy roof in Saigon on April 29, 1975. (It wasn’t actually the embassy but rather an apartment building where senior CIA employees lived, but never mind.) NPR is airing a three-part story on All Things Considered beginning today which tells the story of …
Read this article about all the projects the stimulus bill is funding. Then ask yourself why you’ve heard so little about any of them. For example: For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean …
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Headline: Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers? A question I’d like to have known the answer to before I gave up alcohol back in 2000. Hey! Does this mean I have the best of both worlds?
Well, in part, it comes from e-mail like the one I received this morning: 6. When he traveled to Pakistan , after college on an unknown national passport, people said it didn’t matter. 7. When he sought the endorsement of the Marxist Party in 1996 as he ran for the Illinois Senate, people said it …
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Suppose you’re Tom & Ray Magliozzi, hosts of NPR’s Car Talk. Then suppose somebody calls you up to say you’ve just bought this car at auction, and you feel to make it street legal you need to remove some of the extras. What would you say?
Fed Chairman Bernanke gave a wishy-washy speech today. Bernanke disputed the notion that the Fed is out of ammunition, saying in his speech that “should further action prove necessary, policy options are available to provide additional stimulus.” Er, Ben? With unemployment at 9.5% and possibly rising, why don’t you think further action is necessary? Part …
Outsourced to Leonard Pitts, Jr.. A few words about who “we” is. “This is a moment,” said Glenn Beck three months ago on his radio program, “… that I think we ‘reclaim’ the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down. … We are on the right side of history. …
Reflections on the passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 from political scientist Jacob Hacker. It’s a 16-page PDF document that’s well worth your time.
How many bridges in your county are evaluated thusly: “Basically intolerable requiring high priority of replacement”? We have lots. If you’re curious, you can go to National Bridges and enter your location’s data into the appropriate fields to learn whether your commute traverses any bridges which are about to fall down. Wouldn’t that be useful …
Justin Fox reviews several of them at Harvard Business Review. Of the four he briefly synthesizes, I’ll pass on Ariana Huffington’s. She’s got the wit but not the economic credentials. The other three all look interesting. I like his description of Robert Reich’s Aftershock: “the busy person?s guide to inequality economics…is a brisk, intelligent run-through …