China’s Heir Apparent Rekindles Early Ties To Iowa
China’s Vice President Xi Jinping is coming to America. Next week, he’ll meet with President Obama at the White House. He’ll lead a trade delegation to California. And he also plans to make a stop in Muscatine, Iowa. Why Muscatine? It turns out that Xi wants to catch up with old acquaintances — he first [...]
Remembering Roger Boisjoly: He Tried To Stop Shuttle Challenger Launch
Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol in Utah in January, 1986, when he and four colleagues became embroiled in the fatal decision to launch the Space Shuttle Challenger. Boisjoly was also one of two confidential sources quoted by NPR three weeks later in the first detailed report about the [...]
In Battleground Colorado, Independents On The Rise
At the upscale Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, Scott Kardos, 24, said he’s not interested in being either a Democrat or a Republican. “I don’t really identify with either party,” said Kardos, a recent college graduate with an electrical engineering degree, who was shopping with his girlfriend and her parents. “A lot of the things [...]
Fight For GOP Soul, SuperPACs Spur Negative Political Ad Explosion
Anyone already fatigued from the high rate of negative political ads on TV and radio may want to turn off all their electronics until after Election Day. Because there’s room for it to get significantly worse, Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer told All Things Considered co-host Audie Cornish Monday. Geer leaves the definite impression [...]
Super Bowl’s Political Ads Stir Emotions Amid Beer, Chips And Car Ads
Super Bowl XLVI brought a few surprises, not the least of which was the New England Patriots all-universe quarterback Tom Brady giving the eventual champion New York Giants a two-point head start on the scoreboard by incurring an intentional-grounding penalty. But not all the shockers were on the field. Some of them were ads. One [...]
Seeking Revenge In ‘Underworld Of Vanished Bikes’
In 2006, thieves stole writer Patrick Symmes’ bike in broad daylight on a crowded, New York City street. This inspired Symmes to set out to catch a bike thief — any bike thief. He tells the tale of this revenge-fueled, cross-country journey in the Outside magazine piece “Who Pinched My Ride?” The story is filled [...]
Helicopter Parents Hover In The Workplace
So-called helicopter parents first made headlines on college campuses a few years ago, when they began trying to direct everything from their children’s course schedules to which roommate they were assigned. With millennial children now in their 20s, more helicopter parents are showing up in the workplace, sometimes even phoning human resources managers to advocate [...]
Is White, Working Class America ‘Coming Apart’?
According to the libertarian social scientist Charles Murray, America is “coming apart at the seams.” Class strain has cleaved society into two groups, he argues in his new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010: an upper class, defined by educational attainment, and a new lower class, characterized by the lack of it. [...]
Indiana’s Top Election Official Convicted of Voter Fraud
The New England Patriots weren’t the only losers on Super Bowl weekend in Indiana. With much of the world focused on Indianapolis hosting the big game, a local jury on Saturday convicted Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White on six felony counts, including theft and voter fraud — a crime he was supposed to prevent [...]
Ending Violence Sparked By Baby’s Cry
No parent holds a new baby and thinks that within a year they will have seriously injured or even killed that child. Or that the violence could be sparked by something as common as a baby’s cry. But each year, more than 4,000 young children are hospitalized because they’ve been seriously injured, usually by a [...]
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