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The Injustice of Sentencing Guidelines
By Glenna HallWhen I first heard this story back in December, it nearly broke my heart:Jason Pepper, a former meth addict and drug dealer from the heartland, says he got lucky when he was finally...
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Two More Quick Notes from Beijing
By James FallowsNot meaning to crowd out the guests, to whom I'm grateful, quick updates on two time-sensitive points:1) The Control Tower Silence at National Airport. The WaPo's story about the odd...
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Landing Ourselves: Pilots Can Do More Than You Think
By Glenna HallJim Fallows has already commented on the tower of Washington's principal airport (DCA) going silent, but I can't resist the opportunity to pile on.Pilot humor is really bad, almost as bad...
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How Evolution Helps Us When It Comes to Making Decisions
By Eric Bonabeau In a previous post I described the hunch engine, an exploration-support tool based on interactive genetic algorithms.There is an intriguing parallel I want to expose in more detail...
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Cyber-Security Can't Ignore Human Behavior
By Eric Bonabeau In an earlier post, our beloved Jim Fallows wrote briefly about a DoD-funded cyber-security initiative named SENDS, for Science-Enhanced Networked Domains and Secure Social Spaces. The...
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'Have You No Sense of Decency?' The Wm. Cronon Story
By James Fallows (See UPDATE and correction below)BEIJING, China. I don't mean to keep butting in and have just a minute to type this out, but I think it's important to direct attention to a new abuse...
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Leaked U.S. Cables a 'Credible Source' of Information in the Middle East
By Eric BonabeauAs I was exploring the timeline of events in the Middle East from recent months (a great visualization can be found here), it struck me that the publication of classified diplomatic...
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A Watchtower on the Roof of the World
By Christina LarsonHigh on the Tibetan plateau stands a rustic observation station. Comprised of two low sheds with corrugated steel roofs and one 90-foot tower, it is located in the no man's land...
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How Projects Can Empower Us
By Eric BonabeauYou sometimes come across people whose passion and purpose are contagious, people from whom you want to be infected. Two such people I know have embarked on two very different but...
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Mount Everest: Then and Now
By Christina LarsonHaving just written about the efforts of Chinese and Tibetan observers to grasp the impact of melting glaciers (and drying streams) in the Himalayas, I wanted to add a note about...
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City Judge, Country Judge
By Glenna HallReal courtrooms look nothing like TV. Not much seems to go on, and the pace can be glacially slow. But what's happening is profoundly serious. Judges can send people to death or long...
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Jonathan Rowe
By James FallowsThis past week, there was another sad loss from American public life. The writer and civic activist Jonathan Rowe, whom I had known from our both having worked for Ralph Nader and at...
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Pure Joy
By Glenna HallIn less than six months, we will mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Â I wrote this essay a week after that, and have revisited it from time to time over the past ten...
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China's Nascent Environmentalism
By Christina LarsonMany thanks to Jim, and to readers, for your time this past week. In closing, I wanted to offer, as other guests have done, a more thorough introduction and an invitation for readers...
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Bringing On the Final Guest Crew: Allen, Friedmann, Toyama, Travierso
For this, the final week of the guest-blogger era, I'm going all-out and taking the author-photo route. First some discreet little thumbcuts of the group that has performed so well in this past week....
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Technology Is Not the Answer
By Kentaro ToyamaTechnology is not the answer. That's the conclusion I came to after five years in India trying to find ways to apply electronic technologies to international development. I was the...
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Why It's Hard to Talk About Energy
By Juilo FriedmannWhen I completed my doctorate in geology, I didn't know that I would spend the next 16 years working on either climate or energy. I've worked in Australia and Wyoming, Ireland and...
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The Enduring Power of Virtue
By Kentaro ToyamaVirtue, not technocratic solutions, is what I claimed our world needs more of, but I'm not saying anything new. Virtue goes back at least two-and-a-half millennia. Western accounts of...
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The White Lie of the Self-Made Person
By Kentaro ToyamaWhen you rent a car in India, the car comes with a driver, partly because their wages -- as low as $2-3 a day -- are negligible compared to the cost of the rental. I traveled a lot...
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Gliding and the Mysterious Ways China Affects the World
By Michele TraviersoGliding, by almost any definition, is not a popular sport. However, it could serve as good proxy to illustrate a larger point: that China's rise is affecting even the most...
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