My new TIME Magazine story investigates what government workers actually do all day long and whether they are actually overpaid. If you are not sure which side to love or hate in the Wisconsin imbroglio, this is the story for you. (If you are convinced in the purity of the unions or the righteousness of the governor, then I’d suggest reading something else. Or breathing deeply.)
After talking to many people, reading a lot and listening earnestly to both sides, I concluded that they are both wrong. There’s a third way, and there’s…
John Seabrook has a chilling piece in this week’s New Yorker detailing the 2008 Black Friday stampede at a Long Island Wal-Mart. You have to subscribe to read it, but it’s worth paying for (abstract is here). I wrote about how to prevent these tragedies for Time back when the Wal-Mart incident happened, but Seabrook follows up on what has happened since. And he gives a nice introduction to the larger science of crowd crushes (which, as I explain in The Unthinkable, are no longer mysterious—and almost always preventable.)
The New York Times has a troubling story on the front page about an experiment on homeless people. But what’s troubling is not the experiment, from what I can tell; it’s the newspaper’s fear-based spin on the story.
So here’s the situation: New York City is conducting a test to see if an expensive program to prevent homelessness actually…prevents homelessness. This is radical and admirable—because it almost never happens. We waste billions of dollars in education, welfare and other spending in this country because we don’t test programs in a careful, rigorous way to…
If you turned the Empire State Building on its head and drilled it into the ground, you’d be about as deep into the Earth as the 33 miners trapped in a void in Chile since Aug. 5. What is happening down there? What will happen in a month when the men are rescued, as it seems likely they will be?
My Time colleague Jeff Kluger has a fascinating story about this in the Sept 20 issue. He writes about the importance of groups and leaders in these kinds of disasters—and about the civilizing influence of small…
Paul Krugman has a dead-hit column in today’s NY Times about the “pundit delusion,” or, “the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting—who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback—actually matters.”
I suspect that this delusion extends to all political reporters and their editors, not just pundits. It’s a hubris that comes from being so deep in the woods you have forgotten what the sky looks like. You start thinking that everyone in America knows what is in the financial regulatory bill (or that there was one at all) and what Vice President Biden said…
President Obama’s Oval Office speech last night seemed familiar. As if a speech writer had called up the President’s stock al-Qaeda speeches and done a find-replace. Delete “enemy,” insert “oil.”
A side-by-side comparing last night’s battle lines to the battle lines used in speeches about, um, actual battles!
“But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.”—Oil Spill Address
“But make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of…
I’ve become almost numb to the stories about the end of serious print journalism—the lay-offs, the bureau closings, the disappearance of fact checkers, libraries and integrity. So it was strangely refreshing to read today about one budget cut that may make the world a better place and certainly makes common sense.
Check out Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times this week. He argues that Obama is missing a massive opportunity in the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, and I think he is right.
“Sadly, President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11 with a Bush-level failure of imagination. So far, the Obama policy is: “Think small and carry a big stick.” He is rightly hammering the oil company executives. But he is offering no big strategy to end our oil addiction….Please don’t tell us that our role is just…
