Thanks to shale, the US is sitting on a glut of natural gas. American gas is dirt cheap, currently trading at just $3.60 per million British thermal units (mBtu), while Asian markets currently pay more than four times that amount for liquified natural gas (LNG). Even after liquifying the gas for transport—a process that adds […]

Since April of this year, Nigeria’s army has been pushing back hard against Boko Haram, the extremist Islamist insurgency responsible for the death of more than 4000 people since 2009. The fighting has often been brutal, with allegations of atrocities on the army side have damaging the army’s ability to win the hearts and minds of the […]

We are increasingly at the mercy of deadly germs that are resistant to our existing weapons. The CDC has released its first ever report on antibiotic-resistant germs in the US, and the results are pretty shocking. Wired summarizes some of the central ones here: Each year, in the U.S., 2,049,442 illnesses caused by bacteria and […]

We might have been doing school wrong all these years. The Atlantic profiles “the flipped classroom,” a new educational model in which students listen to lectures at home via digital technology and do their “homework” in the classroom. The benefits of this model may seem obvious—when you most need a teacher’s or professor’s help is when […]

During the Pussy Riot trial last August, Russia observers began to note the “unholy alliance” that was growing between Putin and the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. At the time, we remarked that the vitality of the Russian faith often resided in the people, many of whom are suspicious of power and wealth. “The spiritual light […]

Sky-high tuition rates may be driving millions of students into debt, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping colleges from pouring money into fancy amenities. A new piece in The New Republic discusses how colleges are increasingly turning to posh construction companies to build state-of-the-art dorms with granite countertops, pools, and personal bathrooms that have more in common with […]

It looks like California is heeding Via Meadia’s advice about capital-appreciation bonds, which many California school districts have been using to fund construction and other such projects. These poisonous bonds allow school districts to borrow money and delay payment for decades while the interest can balloon to ten times the number borrowed, and use of […]

An American Bar Association task force has released a report that includes some smart thinking about how to reform the ailing legal education industry. The suggestions include lowering the number classroom hours required for graduation, allowing students to earn educational credit for paid positions, and dropping tenure requirements for law school accreditation. Most important, however, was […]

There are 101 million people globally who suffer today from dementia, but by 2050 that number will have almost tripled to 277 million. That statistic comes from a new report by Alzheimer’s Disease International aimed at showing just how serious our long-term care challenges are. Reuters has more: Even now, the worldwide cost of dementia […]

Here’s a shocker: the latest predictions from the Obama administration have the Affordable Cart Act insuring only half the number initially expected. Reuters: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now expects 11 million uninsured Americans to obtain coverage next year, down from about 22 million projected a year ago, according to the report, […]