5 Best Sunday Columns
Sun, 2 Jan 2011 10:40 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health. Full Story | Top |
Is Obama's Ambassador Gunning for His Job?
Sun, 2 Jan 2011 09:15 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - When President Obama appointed Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to serve as U.S. ambassador to China in 2009, political strategists deemed it a cunning political move. Enlisting Hunstman, a fast-rising GOP star, would surely preclude him from launching a 2012 presidential bid. Or so they thought... This week, Newsweek's McKay Coppins advances the notion that Huntsman will run in 2012. It's a highly speculative piece and some are already pouring cold water on it. Nevertheless, it relies on two reported moments. First, the interview Huntsman gives to Coppins."You know, I’m really focused on what we’re doing in our current position,†Huntsman says. “But we won’t do this forever, and I think we may have one final run left in our bones.†Coppins then presses him on 2012 and Huntsman "declines to comment." To Coppins that was a "winking response" or "about as close to a hat-in-ring announcement as you’ll get from a sitting member of the incumbent’s administration." Secondly, Huntsman insiders tell Coppins that the former Utah governor has been meeting with "several former political advisers in Washington and Salt Lake City to discuss a potential [2012] campaign." And that's a wrap.Obviously, Coppins isn't laying out enough facts to make an airtight case—but is his story plausible?No: This Just Doesn't Make Sense, writes James Fallows at The Atlantic:Political speculation is fun, and we do a lot of it (a) because so many weird things do happen, and (b) there's so little penalty for being proven wrong. But before Newsweek gave this such splashy display, they might have asked: does this pass the "are you kidding" test? To me, it does not...Huntsman is part of the Obama administration. He is right in the middle of dealings with America's most important foreign-policy partner/challenge. So in the GOP Primaries, how exactly is he going to out-anti-Obama anyone else in the field, given that he has served Obama (and, yes, the country) so loyally? The retorts from all the other Republicans are almost too easy. "If Ambassssadorrr Huntsman is so concerned about the Obama threat to America, then why,...?" Full Story | Top |
Economic Predictions for 2011
Sat, 1 Jan 2011 05:32 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - 2010 didn't quite bring the economic recovery, and attendant jobs, many were hoping for. How about 2011? The Financial Times is only one of the publications publishing predictions like mad. Here's a roundup of some of the bets for the coming year in business and the global economy: Full Story | Top |
Universal Advice for New Year's Eve
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:36 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - One thing you tend to notice, the more holiday conversations you have with each passing year, is how strongly some people both delight in and detest New Year's Eve. On the one hand, there are the classy, sparkly parties, lots of champagne, a sense of hope. On the other, there's a boatload of expense and pressure, as well as the subtle awareness that the holiday is, technically, just an accident of calendar organization--not nearly as concrete a way of marking time as a birthday or a religious holiday. Nevertheless, New Year's Eve is upon us, and the web is bursting with commentary for the occasion, offering up the free advice for which the Internet has always been famous. Here are a few of the suggestions we've seen--for everyone from the cynical to the clueless--on how to pull off a successful New Year's Eve: Full Story | Top |
To help the poor, get rid of their cash
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:15 am PST
The Christian Science Monitor - The recent ad spot for M-Kesho, the groundbreaking mobile phone-linked bank account launched earlier this year in Kenya, is endearingly playful. To gently teasing music, a man with a jar of coins digs a gigantic hole in an empty grass field. He sticks his jar deep in the mud, but finds that the hole he’s dug is now too deep to get out of. “There are easier ways to look after your money,†a voiceover tells us. No kidding. Full Story | Top |
Tired of failed New Year's resolutions? Use the Z-effect to your advantage.
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:05 am PST
The Christian Science Monitor - I've finally figured out why we make New Year's resolutions – yearly. It's the work of a stubborn subconscious phenomenon: the Zeigarnik effect (Z-effect). Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik's research in the 1920s showed that we remember unfinished events better than finished events. Full Story | Top |
Five Best Friday Columns: Reflective New Year's Eve Edition
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 07:55 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - The question it asks is clear: Should those we knew and loved be forgotten and never thought of? Should old times past be forgotten? No, says the song, they shouldn't be. We'll remember those times and those people, we'll toast them now and always, we'll keep them close. "We'll take a cup of kindness yet." Full Story | Top |
Quote of the Day: Why Resolutions Are Good, Even When They Fail
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:27 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - "Our resolutions are not failed acts of the will, but successful acts of the imagination. You will not enrol in a doctoral programme and spend more time with your kids and lose 20 pounds in 2011 just by resolving to do so. But you will be far more doomed to fail--and far more emotionally impoverished--if you never even dream up those plans in the first place."That's why our resolutions, even at their most delusional, strike me as the best possible way to start a new year. They bring us back in contact with all the phantom versions of ourselves, those reverse ghosts that haunt our future, waiting to be embodied. Just as other forms of wrongness as optimism propel us out of bed the morning after a wasted day, our annual resolutions propel us into a new year, hopeful all over again that we will be better people in the days to come."- Kathryn Schulz at The Guardian Full Story | Top |
Morning Vid: Ezra Klein on the GOP's Constitution 'Gimmick'
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:13 am PST
The Atlantic Wire - As a guest on MSNBC, The Washington Post's Ezra Klein comments on the new Republican Congress's plan to start off the next session with a full reading of the Constitution. "It's a gimmick," Klein says, arguing that the text of the Constitution is old and complicated and its meaning is subject to varying interpretations. He also references a new congressional rule requiring all subsequent bills to include a statement of their constitutional authority, pointing out that the one bill to do this before the rule was made was the health care bill--specifically in the constitutionally contested individual mandate. See more on the debate this video has started here. Full Story | Top |
Cultural Winners and Losers, 2010
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:00 am PST
Brent Bozell III - 2010 may have been an encouraging year for political conservatives, but it wasn't so rosy for America's culture. The most depressing result was the Second Circuit Court of Appeals granting our television networks the right to employ the nastiest curse words in front of children at any hour of the broadcast day. Full Story | Top |
Is a Bond Crisis Inevitable?
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:00 am PST
Pat Buchanan - With Christmas shoppers out in force and the stock market surging to a two-year high, talk is spreading that the long-awaited recovery is at hand. Full Story | Top |
Big Labor's Snowmageddon Snit Fit
Fri, 31 Dec 2010 12:00 am PST
Michelle Malkin - Diligent English farmers of old once shared a motto about the blessings of work: "Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow." Indolent New York City union officials who oversee snow removal apparently live by a different creed: Sloth enhances political power, Da Boss slow the plow. Full Story | Top |
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