Is Facebook a community resource for the common good? Yes—but it is also a for-profit corporation. Can it effectively be both at the same time? Focusing on Facebook’s Safety Check feature, London-based writer Tausif Noor examines the ways in which the company’s financial mission interacts with its community service mission in this March 2017 post …
Continue reading Up close and personal: Tausif Noor on Facebook’s Safety Check
If a robot takes your job, you’re not the only one who loses income. Since robot workers don’t pay taxes, the government loses money, too. That fact by itself may not stimulate too much sympathy until you realize that the government’s lost income might have repaired a pothole on your street or replaced worn-out playground …
Continue reading Robo-debt: Matt Simon on the taxing of robot labor
Have you heard much about genetically modified (GMO) foods lately? Neither have we, but that might be changing soon. The Food and Drug Administration, part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, has received funding to promote GMO foods, and a lot of people have a lot to say on the subject. Caitlin …
Continue reading Spreading the word: Caitlin Dewey on the promotion of GMO foods
A new major league baseball season is now underway, competing for attention with basketball playoffs, Stanley Cup hockey, and whatever siren song trills from the phones in our pockets. In this May 2017 Atlantic essay, sports writer Will Leitch contemplates some possible rule changes intended to speed up the game. Read it here: Leitch, “The secret life …
Continue reading In the mind, not the arm: Will Leitch on the drama of pitching
The trend toward the growing availability of online courses generates a lot of debate among university professors and administrators, among students, and among the public at large. English professor Devoney Looser was not a strong advocate of online teaching until she had the opportunity (or rather, necessity) to do it herself. She writes about her …
Continue reading Pleasantly surprised: Devoney Looser on online education
What do fax machines have in common with electric cars? More than you may think. History professor Jonathan Coopersmith, who studied the development of fax technology, argues in this March 2017 essay in The Conversation that in order for electric cars to eventually succeed, competing electric car makers need to follow the example of fax …
Continue reading Compatibility helps everyone: Jonathan Coopersmith on standards for technology
Major sports figures such as NBA star LeBron James and Major League pitcher Trevor Bauer have recently spoken publicly about their respective political stances. That’s not a new phenomenon, but it has become prominent in the news lately, accompanied by debate on the appropriateness of such public expressions. NBA reporter for Cleveland.com joins the debate …
Continue reading Athletes speaking up: Joe Vardon on “sticking to sports”
Many of us sing the same lament: the ingredients listed on many of our food products include long unpronounceable words with mysterious purposes. What is that stuff?! Do we really need it? In this February 2017 Columbus Dispatch article, science and environmental reporter Marion Renault asserts that public mistrust of food science is actually harmful …
Continue reading Just say “salt”: Marion Renault on public perceptions of food science
It’s a time-honored strategy, and unfortunately, it works very well. Newsworthy women, from Hillary Clinton to Lady Gaga to Kellyanne Conway and beyond, are often publicly skewered not for their statements and ideas, but for their clothes, their hairstyles, and their bodies. Writer and law student Meredith Simons explores the harmful effects of such public …
Continue reading Ugly talk: Meredith Simons on sexist comments in the news
You’ve probably had the experience. There is something you care about so deeply that you can’t imagine how its importance wouldn’t be obvious to everyone else. And yet, when you talk about it, you see the ‘so what?’ cloud forming on the faces of your conversation partners. Sociology graduate student Chelsea Johnson had this experience …
Continue reading It’s natural: Chelsea Johnson on natural hair and the art of persuasion
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