Here at Via Meadia, we’ve been extremely optimistic about the potential for online courses and MOOCs to shake up the stagnant world of higher education. Our optimism assumes, of course, that enough students have, or soon will have, video-quality broadband internet connections. As the Chronicle of Higher Education warns, this may not always be a safe […]

Working on the weekdays and scuba-diving in beautiful oceans on the weekend: It sounds like an idyllic way to spend one’s golden years. But as Kathleen Peddicord writes in the HuffPo, many of these overseas “retirement” communities are actually filled with Americans of all ages: In most cases around the world, you’ll find nothing like traditional retirement […]

Baby boomers will soon want to downsize and move into a cushy retirement, but according to Emily Badger at The Atlantic, their War on the Young may put a crimp in their plans:  “[Boomers] will want to sell their homes, and they’re hoping there are people behind them to buy their homes,” says Nelson, director of […]

The US Department of Defense is investing heavily in green technologies, pledging to source one-fourth of its energy from renewable sources by 2025. Julia Whitty reports on the Navy’s green efforts for Mother Jones: Four times in history [the Navy] has overhauled old transportation paradigms—from sail to coal to gasoline to diesel to nuclear—carrying commercial shipping […]

As you’ve no doubt read by now, Hugo Chavez finally succumbed to his tumors yesterday. Pravda certainly carried the most amusing title for its obituary: “Chavez loses his battle, Heaven gains an angel”. But the best, most well-rounded assessment of the man’s life and legacy in our view came from The Economist, whose conclusion largely gybes […]

Many have been keen to report that the rich aren’t actually spurning California for other, lower-tax states. The flight of the wealthy, they’re happy to announce, is just a myth.Unfortunately, they’re missing the other half of the picture. The problem with California’s severe taxes and byzantine regulations is not just that they make life unpleasant […]

As reported by Religion News Service and other media, on February 19, 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada appointed Andrew Bennett to be Ambassador for Religious Freedom. Bennett, a Catholic with a doctorate in political science from Edinburgh and dean of a small college in Ottawa, is to head a new Office on Religious […]

Eight former DEA chiefs want President Obama to keep a lid on pot. In a joint statement released on Tuesday, they urged Obama to have his administration sue Colorado and Washington over their new marijuana legalization laws: One of the former DEA administrators, Peter Bensinger, told the AP that the more time goes by, the […]

The war in Syria just strayed into Iraq.Forty-eight Syrian soldiers were killed yesterday inside Iraq, in a well-coordinated ambush by gunmen whose identities remain unknown. Numerous reports say the soldiers were unarmed and many of them were wounded. They apparently crossed into Iraq near Yaarubiyeh to escape heavy fighting in northern Syria and were being […]

Student debt soared to nearly $1 trillion at the end of 2012, but young Americans now have the lowest levels of total debt that they have had for 15 years, according to the WSJ: A typical young U.S. household—defined as one led by someone under age 35—had $15,000 in total debt in 2010, down from […]