Miss Grundy Was Fired Today

Once deified, now demonized, teachers are under assault from union-busting Republicans on the right and wealthy liberals on the left. And leading the charge from all directions is a woman most famous for losing her job: the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Published: Mar 22, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,212 words)

Power and the Presidency, From Kennedy to Obama

To be sure, the President’s control over foreign affairs had been growing since the Theodore Roosevelt administration (and still grows today). TR’s acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone preceded Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter World War I, which was a prelude to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s management of the run-up to the victorious American effort in World War II. In the 1950s, Harry S. Truman’s response to the Soviet threat included the decision to fight in Korea without a Congressional declaration of war, and Dwight Eisenhower used the Central Intelligence Agency and brinksmanship to contain Communism.

Source: Smithsonian
Published: Mar 21, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,090 words)

Jonathan Ive: How Did a British Polytechnic Graduate Become Apple’s Design Genius?

It is hard to know what is the greater intrigue: recent conjecture that Ive is preparing to walk away from Apple to relocate to his beautiful Grade II-listed mansion in Somerset so his children can be educated in the UK (false—he is not, and the property is now standing empty); that he will step out of the shadows and assume Steve Jobs’ role when the great man stands down (highly doubtful); or what—or perhaps more accurately who—propelled him to leave for the U.S. in the first place and deny Britain the talents of one of the most influential designers of the modern age.

Author: Rob Waugh
Source: Daily Mail
Published: Mar 21, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,079 words)

Aftershocks: A Nation Bears the Unbearable

To geologists, earthquakes are a constant in the planet’s eternal becoming. To the Japanese, they are simply a constant. In a given year, there can be hundreds, usually barely discernible micro-events. They rattle the pictures on the wall, the china on the table, but they rarely stop the conversation. Donald Keene, a professor at Columbia and the dean of Japanese-literature scholars, said, “Very often, when I have been away from Japan for a while and come back, there will be a small earthquake, and I notice it and no one else in the room does. They laugh at me.” He added, “People expect this all the time, that they will be warned. But when a quake of great magnitude happens they are shocked. The world changes.”

Author: Evan Osnos
Source: The New Yorker
Published: Mar 21, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,702 words)

Out of Options: A Surprising Culprit in the Nuclear Crisis

Japan’s reactors are “light water” reactors, whose safety depends on an uninterrupted power supply to circulate water quickly around the hot core. A light water system is not the only way to design a nuclear reactor. But because of the way the commercial nuclear power industry developed in its early years, it’s virtually the only type of reactor used in nuclear power plants today. Even though there might be better technologies out there, light water is the one that utility companies know how to build, and that governments have historically been willing to fund. Economists call this problem “technological lock-in”: The term refers to the process by which one new technology can prevail over another for no good reason other than circumstance and inertia.

Source: Boston Globe
Published: Mar 20, 2011
Length: 9 minutes (2,369 words)

Small Changes, Big Results: Behavioral Economics at Work in Poor Countries

In the developed world, these ideas are beginning to affect policy. For instance, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 encourages U.S. employers to establish automatic enrollment for retirement plans. Could such approaches help alleviate poverty in developing countries? If policies based on behavioral economics can help Americans save more, could they also help Indian children get vaccinated or Kenyan children get cleaner water?

Source: Boston Review
Published: Mar 20, 2011
Length: 13 minutes (3,472 words)

A Boom Behind Bars: Private Jail Operators Profit from Illegal Immigrant Crackdown

In CCA facilities for immigrant detention, inmates have become lost—sometimes fatally—in the ICE churn. CCA’s Eloy Detention Facility in Arizona had more deaths than any other immigration jail listed in a congressional report last year. In one case, a 62-year-old Ghanaian barber named Emmanuel Owusu spent two years in a CCA facility contesting his deportation from the U.S., and died there of diabetes-related heart problems. He had lived in the U.S. for 33 years. In internal documents, ICE employees wondered why he ever ended up in an ICE facility to begin with.

Source: Businessweek
Published: Mar 19, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)

Google: The Quest

You get the sense that under Larry Page’s leadership, Google could try its hand at anything. More than anything else during my interviews with people who know Page, one comment stands out: “I don’t care what you put in the article,” says David Lawee, Google’s head of acquisitions. “To me, this is the real story: Larry is a truly awesome inventor-entrepreneur. My aspiration for him is that he becomes one of the greatest inventors-entrepreneurs in history, in the realm of the Thomas Edisons of the world.”

Source: Fast Company
Published: Mar 18, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,312 words)

Why Yasir Qadhi Wants to Talk About Jihad

Beyond the gothic confines of Yale, he was becoming one of the most influential conservative clerics in American Islam, drawing a tide of followers in the fundamentalist movement known as Salafiya. To many young Muslims wrestling with conflicts between faith and country, Qadhi was a rock star. To law-enforcement agents, he was also a figure of interest, given his prominence in a community considered vulnerable to radicalization. Some officials, noting his message of nonviolence, saw him as an ally. Others were wary, recalling a time when Qadhi spouted a much harder, less tolerant line. On this night, however, it was Qadhi’s closest followers who were questioning him.

Published: Mar 18, 2011
Length: 34 minutes (8,615 words)

Princeton vs. UCLA: Reflections on a Historic Upset

I had a courtside seat for that game in Indianapolis, on the Princeton bench. I was a sophomore, small — too small, and slow — forward on that 1996 team. The only action I saw was the pregame layup lines. But countless times over the past 15 years, my former teammates and I have all had conversations, even with people we’ve just met, along these lines: “Oh yeah, you played basketball at Princeton? Were you in that team that beat UCLA?” “Yes.” “Man, I remember that game, I was at my frat house at Scranton going wild.” Or “I was at a sports bar in Baltimore,” or “I was in my den, screaming at the television.” People — and, believe me, not just Princeton or UCLA alums — know precisely where they were, what they were doing and what they were drinking (often alcohol) during that game.

Source: Time
Published: Mar 17, 2011
Length: 38 minutes (9,658 words)