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I've Got the Next Great Story Lead for CNN
If you're anything like me, you're already worried about how CNN will keep going, once even they recognize that there is no conceivable extra angle to wring out of the sad mystery of MH370. What new...
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The Electronic Medical-Records Email(s) of the Day, #3
For background on the EMR saga, see this original article and previous installments one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Our series went on hiatus while I was on the road in Mississippi....
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The Man Who Thinks He Has Solved the MH370 Mystery
Anyone familiar with modern Malaysia -- and hey, that should include almost everybody in this era of MH370 coverage -- knows the name "Dr. Mahathir." For more than two decades, Mahathir Mohamad,...
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Today's Reading Tips: Donald Sterling, 'Apartheid Israel,' False Equivalence
These writers are well-known enough not to need any pointing-out from me, but the insights in their pieces are strong and clear enough that I still want to highlight them. 1) Jeffrey Toobin on Donald...
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Bad News, Good Headline
On the New York Times site just now: What is very good, and accurate, about this headline: the verb "blocks" and the noun "filibuster." On why those two words are importantāin contrast, say, to the...
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The China Story You Should Pay Attention To, and the One You Should Ignore
First, the China stories you should skip. Using up my once-per-lifetime pass for such activity, I am about to show a screenshot of a tweet that I myself put out two days ago.Ā The backstory here is the...
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The Most Exciting 1,231.4 Miles in Sports
OK, we've all just seen the most exciting 2 minutes in sports, from Churchill Downs. Congrats to California Chrome. Before it recedes too far in the past, let me note an amazing achievement recently in...
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What Mississippi Catfish Farms Look Like From Above
Or at least that is how some of them looked yesterday, from 2500 feet up over the Mississippi Delta. (The triangular white area is window reflection.) For another view, which gives an idea of how...
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Emancipation Day Commemoration in Eastern Mississippi
Reinvention and resilience across the nationRead more Over the months Deb Fallows has reported on a variety of impressive and innovative public schools around the country. For instance: the...
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Those Vibram Shoe Refunds? I'm Not Claiming One.
I gather that there is much gleeful stomping on the graveĀ image of Vibram and the weirdo/chic "finger shoes" it has popularized, because the company has settled a suit claiming the shoes offered no...
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How a Small Plane Crash Looks When Passengers Are About to Survive Rather...
Let me explain the background of the amazing video below, shot two days ago in Australia. It's been 15 years since the Cirrus SR20 made its debut as "the plane with theĀ parachute." At the time of its...
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Basketball, NYT, Filibusters: 3 Stories Worth Reading
Three stories worth your time: 1) Why Donald Sterling Shouldn't Be Forced to Sell. A contrarian but convincing argument by Anthony Yanatta for a better way out of the Sterling debacle. No, Yanatta is...
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After the Latest Peril-in-the-Skies Saga, Should You Be Afraid to Fly?
I don't know Kevin Townsend, though I suspect I'd like him if I did. He's been fighting the good fight against the filibuster, and we have tech and other interests in common. Today he put up a riveting...
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Why the Latest Air-Scare Shows How Safe Airline Travel Is, Not How Dangerous
Yesterday I mentioned a widely circulated web account from an author who felt he had narrowly avoided being part of what would have been history's worst airline disaster. Indeed, that was the headline...
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Beer Notes From All Over, Mississippi to Beijing to Washington DC
The world is full of sorrows, but it is also full of ever-better beer. To wit: 1) My friend Adam Minter with a report from Beijing, "If you can't breathe, drink." It is about one of the new craft...
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Household News: May 18, 2014
1) Deb Fallows, best known to the world as author of Dreaming in Chinese and of a series of popular American Futures posts on language and schools (and best known to me as my wife), has a very nice...
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Telling the Difference Between Danger and Fear
A few days ago I pointed out that yet another popular news item had described how frightened an airline passenger was, about a situation that was objectively not dangerousĀ at all."Yet another" because...
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You Won't Regret Reading These Essays by 18-year-olds in Mississippi
Reinvention and resilience across the nationRead more In case you have missed it, please be sure to check out the latest post by my wife, Deb Fallows, from our time in the "Golden Triangle" of eastern...
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Of Fear and Flying
Last night I mentioned the disconnect between things that are frightening, from sharks to airline flights, and things that are likely actually to do us harm. Several reactions worth noting: 1) From a...
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Coming to Terms With Difficult History: Japan, China, Germany, and the United...
Listen to the next discussion you hear of tensions between Japan and two of its neighbors, South Korea and China. You'll hear again and again that an important root problem is Japan's difficulty in...
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