Life of Alan

(tags: Judicial)

(tags: Communication)

(tags: Moscow)

(tags: Ideas)

(tags: Detroit)

(tags: NGO)

(tags: Obama)

With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition. A case-study of our post-journalistic age.

(tags: Journalism)

The MPC is one of the world's leading developers of demographic data resources. We provide population data to thousands of researchers, policymakers, teachers, and students. All MPC data are available free over the internet.

(tags: Population)

This visualization shows stacked time series of reported occupations in the United States Labor Force from 1850-2000. The data has been normalized: for each census year, the percentage of the polled labor force in each occupation is shown. The data is originally from the United States Census Bureau and was provided by the University of Minnesota Population Center (ipums.org).

The categorization scheme used was devised in 1950. As a result, some category names may seem outdated and more modern occupations may be missing.

Data for the 1890 census is missing. All visualized values for that year have been interpolated. Also, some categories suffer from missing data in 1940, in which case you may notice some steep drops for that year.

(tags: Labor)

(tags: Capital_Markets)

The Commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress has been created at the beginning of 2008 on French government's initiative. Increasing concerns have been raised since a long time about the adequacy of current measures of economic performance, in particular those based on GDP figures. Moreover, there are broader concerns about the relevance of these figures as measures of societal well-being, as well as measures of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Reflecting these concerns, President Sarkozy has decided to create this Commission, to look at the entire range of issues. Its aim is to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress, to consider additional information required for the production of a more relevant picture, to discuss how to present this information in the most appropriate way, and to check the feasibility of measurement tools proposed by the Commission.

(tags: International)

In July, President Obama met for 45 minutes with leaders of American Jewish organizations. All presidents meet with Israel’s advocates. Obama, however, had taken his time, and powerhouse figures of the Jewish community were grumbling; Obama’s coolness seemed to be of a piece with his willingness to publicly pressure Israel to freeze the growth of its settlements and with what was deemed his excessive solicitude toward the plight of the Palestinians. During the July meeting, held in the Roosevelt Room, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Obama that “public disharmony between Israel and the U.S. is beneficial to neither” and that differences “should be dealt with directly by the parties.” The president, according to Hoenlein, leaned back in his chair and said: “I disagree. We had eight years of no daylight” — between George W. Bush and successive Israeli governments — “and no progress.”

(tags: Lobbying)

There are three forces shaping the world, an Arab reporter I met in the Gaza Strip once told me: money, women, and journalism. On the first and third counts, he might have been thinking of Qatar, where I pass by luxury shopping malls, glittering real estate developments, and, in a spirit of reasonableness, traffic signs that advise caution when driving the wrong way down one-way streets. Over the past decade, this tiny desert emirate of a million and a half people — a bump on the rib cage of Saudi Arabia, directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran — has asserted itself on the world stage in large measure by pouring money into, of all things, journalism. Since 1996, it has been funding Al Jazeera (Arabic for “the island”), the network that revolutionized the Arab media and is poised to do the same for the English-speaking world. Passing through the security gate, where a Yemeni guard gives my documents the once-over, I enter the air-conditioned headquarters of Al Jazeera English…

(tags: Media)

(tags: French_Guyana)

(tags: media:middle_east)

(tags: Congo-Kinshasa Rwanda)

In a lushly beautiful corner of China, an experiment is under way to determine how lush and beautiful the country can remain—or become—as its economy continues to grow. The test is occurring in Yunnan province, the hilly and subtropical area just north of Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, and it has brought together an improbable combination of American and Chinese personalities, institutions, and historical connections.

The main American player is Brian Linden, 47 years old, who came to China in 1984 and has been here most of the time since. Linden is well over six feet tall, with expressive, theatrical features that once were familiar to hundreds of millions of people. Soon after his arrival, he was spotted by a movie director while jogging down a Beijing street and cast as the lead in a Chinese movie.

(tags: Yunnan)

(tags: Lobbying)

As we head into the 4th of July weekend, hot dogs are everywhere. They're on our grill and on our plates. They're on our TVs (the annual hot dog eating contest on ESPN). And this being Serious Eats, they're on our mind. Let's discuss. We bring you Serious Eats' definitive guide to America's regional hot dog styles.

(tags: Gastronomy)

Want to appear on The Colbert Report but just can't finish that groundbreaking political memoir? Now you don't have to! Use the Colbert Nation's advanced Interview Simulation technology to go toe-to-toe with the most Lincolnish host on television.

(tags: Daily_Show)

I remember sitting in Shakespeare class, basking in my good luck. The wait list was nearly 100 people, but here I was, a new student at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., watching the legendary Fred Stocking in action. In 1979, Dr. Stocking was a year shy of retirement, an icon to four decades of students in this small college in the Berkshires. He was lean and meticulous, with a bow tie and thick white hair, and he lived Shakespeare — doting on Puck, thundering through Hamlet, and lifting our gaze from the crass pursuit of A's to the beauty of weathered truths.

He encouraged me to make writing my career, and then unwittingly shaped that career. It happened when I asked him a random question: "How do you determine a student's grade?"

"Well," he said, "I add up the grades for the essays, quizzes, the midterm and final. I average them out. Then I consult my stomach."

(tags: Williams)

As a city in motion, Houston constantly evolves. And it is also a city that uses enormous amounts of energy. Its mayor, Bill White, has made it his goal to help Houston evolve again — into a more energy-efficient place.

White is a soft-spoken man without a lot of hair, and with a steady gaze. A former deputy secretary of energy, White has been mayor for almost six years. And here in America's energy capital, he's made energy one of his signature issues.

All those long commutes, and all those big air-conditioned houses, use enormous amounts of energy.

"We need a dramatic reduction in the energy consumed in structures," White said, "if we are going to continue to grow, and reduce emissions including carbon emissions."

The city tried to do just that — by subsidizing an affordable house. It's near the freight railroad tracks, but with excellent insulation and a solar panel.

(tags: Houston)

(tags: Banking)

(tags: Psychology)

It's cost the NHS £300m and its practitioners are wielding the axe at magazine giant Condé Nast. But is it all just smoke and mirrors? Ex-management consultant Matthew Stewart recalls his career in the "efficiency business" – and reveals its dark arts

(tags: Consulting)

(tags: health_care)

The financial crisis has called into question many of our core assumptions about economic structures, governance and institutions. But there has been little attention paid to the basic unit of economic collaboration and production: the firm. In recent decades Britain developed a corporate monoculture in which the ‘shareholder value’ creed treated firms simply as the property of their shareholders, to be traded, exploited and disposed of in pursuit of profit. Government policy making has done little to call this culture into question, depriving our economy of a richer vision of what a good company is and what it can do. This crisis is a chance to ask deep questions about our firms: how can they meet social and political as well as economic goals? How can firms be modelled so that not only shareholders but employees, the economy and society profit? Many of these models already exist.

(tags: Management)