Americans are ambivalent about testing, standards, and accountability in their children’s schools. This is clear from survey results that swing wildly depending on how, exactly, the question is phrased — and on whether the practice in question might inconvenience one’s own kid, as apart from “fixing those awful schools across town.”
Listen to the president and one would think that he was in office during the financial crisis that began on September 15, 2008. For the nth time, Obama reminded the nation on 60 Minutes of the financial meltdown he inherited. That is his usual way of suggesting to the American people that they could hardly hope for normal times after six years of his own governance.
King Pyrrhus of Epirus was planning an attack on Rome. A confidante didn’t think it was necessary, or that it would turn out well. And what if we should beat Rome, what then? The king vowed that he would attack the rest of Italy. And then? Libya and Carthage. Then all of Greece! And then?
A fight has broken out in New York over an opera: Jewish groups are protesting the Metropolitan Opera’s production of a work called The Death of Klinghoffer, which dramatizes the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking by Palestinian terrorists and the resulting murder of a wheelchair-bound Jewish vacationer named Leon Klinghoffer.
Occasionally, a bill sitting on the governor’s desk offers a window into the inner workings of California politics. And like the old guise about sausage-making, studying the product’s constitution isn’t a pretty picture.
As everyone now knows, a man who had recently arrived in the United States from Liberia showed up ill at the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on September 25. Despite telling a nurse that he had just flown in from Africa, he was discharged by doctors who were apparently unaware of his travel history.
In a recent critique of Richard Epstein's call for another U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, I wrote the following at the end of my piece:
Princess Diana’s legacy still inspires debate. The royal cover girl who historically sold greater numbers of magazine issues than any other celebrity was no more or less flawed than most human beings – just a lot more privileged and popular.
The most astonishing revelation I learned about the nation’s central bank is that it does not have the capability of discovering when one of the large money center bank members becomes insolvent.
It has become commonplace to describe the midterm political contests as the Seinfeld election — a campaign about nothing. In fact, that’s not correct. This is an election that is still very much about how people view President Obama.
David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of work and the role that automation and smart machines might play in the workforce. Autor stresses the importance of Michael Polanyi's insight that many of the things we know and understand cannot be easily written down or communicated. Those kinds of tacit knowledge will be difficult for smart machines to access and use. In addition, Autor argues that fundamentally, the gains from machine productivity will accrue to humans. The conversation closes with a discussion of the distributional implications of a world with a vastly larger role for smart machines.
Images of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appearing frail and in bed have raised questions about the seriousness of his condition, and who might eventually succeed him.
A California Republican rising star -- that rarest of specimens -- is squaring off against a veteran Democratic politician and policy wonk in the race for state controller.
At the White House Friday morning, President Obama awarded the National Medal of Science to Stanford Professors Emeriti Thomas Kailath and Burton Richter. The award is the nation's highest honor for achievement in the fields of science and engineering.
