Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daichii disaster, when a monstrously powerful earthquake—so big it was felt from space—led to meltdowns at a nuclear power plant. The backlash against nuclear power was swift: Japan shut down all its reactors and to date has only restarted two. Germany, meanwhile, vowed to rid itself of nuclear energy […]

We’re shocked, shocked to hear that there may be yet another way Obamacare is costing more than originally advertised.One of the key features of the Affordable Care Act was the creation of a Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan to help those with pre-existing conditions get and keep coverage. According to MedPage Today, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid […]

After Operation Pillar of Defense, during which Hamas and other Gazan militias launched hundreds of missiles into Israel, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) claimed its Iron Dome defense system intercepted 84 percent of incoming missiles. That would mean just 58 rockets landed in Israel. If these figures are correct, wonder MIT’s Professor Theodore Postol and two other scientists, how is […]

Marissa Mayer’s move to ban telework at Yahoo prompted some harsh criticism for working women, but what about men? Three fathers shared a male perspective on balancing work and family in The Atlantic: In dual-income families at least, fathers have even greater work-life conflict issues than mothers (according to the National Study of the Changing Workforce in […]

This weekend, more than 3,000 dead pigs showed up in a river that bisects the megacity of Shanghai. The river is the primary water source for approximately 22 percent of Shanghai’s 23 million residents. And no one could say for sure who was responsible.Events like this “pig soup” disaster have incited calls for increased government transparency […]

Yesterday Iranian authorities blocked the use of most VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), technology commonly used to get around internet filters and electronic snooping, especially in places like China. This is apparently one of the final steps as Iran prepares to completely seal itself off from the World Wide Web, creating a domestic “halal” intranet similar to North […]

So why are the North Koreans acting so crazy? In the last few days, they have vowed to tear up the armistice agreement with the South, taken down the cross-border hotline between the two countries, and put their troops on high alert, awaiting a “final strike order” from Kim Jong-un—all supposedly in protest of a ten-day […]

Good news: Saudi Arabia may be doing away with executions by beheading. A committee made up of representatives of the interior, justice, and health ministries is reportedly considering getting rid of the Kingdom’s notorious punishment of death-by-swordsman in favor of firing squads, says Ahram Online.The bad news is that the committee isn’t considering the switch […]

As regular readers know, I’m teaching a class at Bard this semester on “The Public Intellectual and the Internet.” The course is a combination of writing workshops and exploring the way in which changes in the media affect the way writers and thinkers connect with public. A lot of our reading in the first half […]

This week, Rand Paul’s filibuster highlighted divisions within the Republican party, but in California, Democrats are waging a civil war of their own: Via Meadia readers know that the most important political battle in America today isn’t the much-ballyhooed battle for the soul of the GOP. It is the blue civil war, pitting key elements of the Democratic […]