PUBLICATIONS

  • Social networks are out to be more encompassing and controlling, more totalizing, than earlier media ever was. Emotional appeals can be good for politics. They can spur civic involvement and they can galvanize public attention, focusing it on injustices and abuses of power. But there’s a dark side to social media’s emotionalism. Trump’s popularity took…

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  • “Writers have poor career prospects and don’t make a lot of money.” You want to be a writer! No matter what you are told, don’t believe everything you hear and don’t let anybody discourage you. “Writers have poor career prospects and don’t make a lot of money” is only perception. You want to write and…

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  • So you want to be an astronaut? Um. Well… Telling people that they can do anything, whether fueled by imagination or hard work, conceals the critical role of genetics, environment, education, culture, timing and chance in success. Not every everyone who wants to be a neurosurgeon, a sports star or head of state can become…

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  • Ethiopia first burned itself into the West’s collective memory with the horrific famines of 1973 and 1984, when hundreds of thousands starved to death Today, at a time when international donors are distracted by a string of humanitarian disasters around the world, Ethiopia is in the grip of a devastating drought sparked by the worst…

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  • Beyond All Privacy Rights

    Apple is strongly objecting to a court’s order stating that the company must help the F.B.I. access the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. What if the government asks us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create? Should a back door be built into devices…

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  • AP Photo/Carlos Osorio Trump is running an exceptionally visceral campaign. As Donald Trump’s GOP opponents regroup in South Carolina, they are running into a new political phenomenon: Trump is riding on a wave of adulation. Rarely has a presidential hopeful emerged like Donald Trump, who consistently touts his resume and plans for the nation in…

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  • Consumers can make more informed choices. (Brennan Linsley/Associated Press) Making the changes necessary to fix the problems in both our agriculture and in our diets requires a fundamental shift in attitude. Some of today’s major agricultural problems, such as pollution, greenhouse gases and soil erosion began decades ago, with government incentives that rewarded production of…

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  • Trump Power

    “Despairing white middle-class has long yearned for a white knight to fight for it against the global economic elite.” – Trump is that white knight. Trump, to enter the race to the GOP nomination, from a billionaire real estate mogul, has entirely reinvented himself and could soon attempt another transformation. In words and deeds, he…

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  • PARIS — More and more voices at the U.N. climate change conference are standing up for at least trying to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, rather than the more commonly cited 2 degrees C. It’s a dizzying goal: The world is already at about 1 degrees Celsius of warming, with about 400…

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  • A general view on the chimneys of the Hsieh-ho Power Plant in Keelung, northern Taiwan.   EPA/DAVID CHANG In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists demonstrate the full ramifications of a widely accepted theory about climate change: that it will almost certainly have a disproportionate impact on the poor. Climate change won’t…

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