I’m ambivalent about the value of blog comments. Part of me loves Andrew Sullivan’s blog because he spares us from having to wade through the bushels of crap he undoubtedly receives– though Sullivan often highlights and edits the best of his reader emails in a way that provides excellent counter-perspective to a particular topic or…Continue Reading…
Anthropologists are fretting over the Jared Diamond fallout. Dudes, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t engage the public (which is what many of you want) without risking that your work will be interpreted in ways that you never intended. Diamond is an easy straw man because he’s not a member of your club….Continue Reading…
The riddle of EPA’s reluctance to consider soot a contributor to global warming has befuddled me since I read this story, which I thought made a solid case: While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies…Continue Reading…
“We are at the beginning of a great storm that is about to sweep the country,” predicts Abduh Rehman, who directs the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. He’s not referring to the current Taliban insurgency in Pakistan, but to the madrasas that poor Pakistani families are increasingly relying on to feed and house their children….Continue Reading…
Mexico may still be in lockdown mode, but I suspect American fears of swine flu are ebbing. Alas, we may have only a short reprieve before pandemics starting hitting with regularity, warns epidemiologist Larry Brilliant in the WSJ weekend edition: In our lifetimes, or our children’s lifetimes, we will face a broad array of dangerous…Continue Reading…
So is this what it comes down to in environmental debates, who is more successful at manipulating the public? As the N.Y. Times reports, EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. Among…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, this NYT magazine piece won a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent to the Oscars. What timing.
If Petraeus has his timeline right and things go from bad to unthinkable in Pakistan, choosing between a military dictatorship or the Taliban will be a no-brainer. But it sounds like there’s no guarantee of even having that choice. According to this Fox news report, Patraeus believes that the Pakistani army is” superior” to the…Continue Reading…
Every penny ante blogger with big dreams latched on to this piece in the WSJ a few weeks ago, specifically this line: It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Forget it. Clay Shirky, who has major cred, writes that the WSJ piece is “worthless as a…Continue Reading…