May 28, 2010
Science Friday: Rock and Roll
Science Friday: A rockin’ geologic feature, here or below.
May 27, 2010
Fresh Air: Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day
The rocker talks with Terri on going from the record studio to Broadway with “American Idiot,” a new musical recently nominated for a Tony award.
The Medium: The Web=City; Pricey Apps=The Suburbs
Virginia Heffernan, one of the best writers around, cleverly dissects the evolution of, and efforts to tame, the teeming city that is the Internet. A sampling:
“The Web is a teeming commercial city. It’s haphazardly planned. Its public spaces are mobbed, and signs of urban decay abound in broken links and abandoned projects. Malware and spam have turned living conditions in many quarters unsafe and unsanitary. Bullies and hucksters roam the streets. An entrenched population of rowdy, polyglot rabble seems to dominate major sites.”
Read on about the “way out, an orderly suburb that lets you sample the Web’s opportunities without having to mix with the riffraff. “
(Photo credit: Kevin Van Aelst, NYT.)
May 24, 2010
Child Care Subsidy Woes
The New York Times has a compelling story today about working women losing their child care subsidies and having to go on welfare to get the services they need to finish school and try to re-enter the workforce with more advanced skills.
False Narratives Watch: Crime and the Economy
NPR has a story up about crime dropping for the third straight year “despite” the economic downturn. The implication is that we should expect crime rates to skyrocket during a recession and that it’s odd or weird that we’re not seeing that during the Great Recession.
While NPR does quote researchers all too willing to back up this premise, at least one report says (in so many words) that the connection is bogus. A 2009 report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency finds scant connection between crime rates and the economy in history.
At the very least, NPR and other reporters covering the crime story should be pointing this out.