Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman weighed in today on how to fix the economy in an interview on NPR. Among his key points ( Read more... )

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  The first annular solar eclipse of the 21st century that will be visible from the United States happens this Sunday, May 20--and there are 154 national parks in its path.
  


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  Coming soon to a living room near you: the transparent TV.
  


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  Just be careful if you decide to buy your new transparent HDTV at Wal-Mart. You might get bitten by a snake.
  


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  While NASA ( Read more... )

In the wake of the French elections that brought Francois Hollande to power, Greece may be moving closer to openly rebelling against the European Union's austerity measures. Greece has been unable to form a coalition government, which would lead to another vote next month in which parties opposed to the bailout deal with the EU are poised to ( Read more... )

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  Economist Robert Reich, a public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, gave a short, sweet, and to the point commentary last week on NPR's Marketplace about why "austerity measures" are a bad idea in an economic downturn. Bottom line: It's not just about debt, it's ( Read more... )

You go to any major college campus and it seems like every other student is majoring in business. Well, it turns out it doesn't just seem that way: Nearly 20%--1 in 5!!--undergraduates are business majors. A lot of recruiters view business degrees as next to worthless and want to hire employees with broader backgrounds. Meanwhile, you find that ( Read more... )

Now that all the fun of wishing and dreaming about the Mega Millions jackpot has passed (nope! didn't win), it's time to tackle more serious topics. Like what, you ask? Well for starters, what is probably the most dire threat to human civilization as we know it ( Read more... )

The arguments in the Supreme Court over several states' lawsuits against the federal government over President Obama's health care plan are rather interesting and go to the heart of some very thorny constitutional issues. Also, for those who choose to take a truly intellectually honest look at the merits of all the arguments, it can be a great ( Read more... )

I always wonder why this type of story always seems to be buried in a footnote somewhere instead of being the lead story on every major newscast and on the front page of every magazine and newspaper. Anyway ( Read more... )

Some good stuff in today's New York Times:

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  One of the biggest challenges that American and Western forces are facing in efforts to turn Afghanistan into something other than a failed state is the lack of efforts by the Afghan government to address widespread corruption. The affects of corruption on Afghan society are damaging, reflected in things ( Read more... )

Lying at the root of a lot of the talk about austerity and spending cuts is the idea of "moral hazard", a formerly obscure term used by the insurance industry to describe how behavior patterns can be altered when people don't have to bear the full brunt of the consequences of their actions. This idea, whether described as moral hazard or not, has ( Read more... )