It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable ­past.

(tags: Central_Asia)

(tags: Mathematics)

During one of our first conversations, Brent James told me a story that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from a doctor. For most of human history, James explained, doctors have done more harm than good. Their treatments consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea and, most common of all, bleeding their patients. James, who is the chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, a network of hospitals and clinics in Utah and Idaho that President Obama and others have described as a model for health reform, then rattled off a list of history books that told the fuller story. Sure enough, these books recount that from the time of Hippocrates into the 19th century, medicine made scant progress. “The amount of death and disease would be less,” Jacob Bigelow, a prominent doctor, said in 1835, “if all disease were left to itself.”

(tags: Health_Care)

The merry month of July 2009 had barely witnessed the spectacle of Al Franken eventually taking his seat as the junior senator from Minnesota when, immediately following the death of Walter Cronkite, Time magazine took an online poll to determine who was now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” Seven percent of those responding named Katie Couric. Nineteen percent nominated Charles Gibson. Twenty-nine percent went for Brian Williams. But the clear winner, garnering 44 percent, was Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Either I missed it, or the poll failed to specify, in that wonderfully reassuring way that polls purport to do, what had been its “margin of error.”

(tags: funny_stuff)

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable ­past.

(tags: Central_Asia)

(tags: Mathematics)

During one of our first conversations, Brent James told me a story that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from a doctor. For most of human history, James explained, doctors have done more harm than good. Their treatments consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea and, most common of all, bleeding their patients. James, who is the chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, a network of hospitals and clinics in Utah and Idaho that President Obama and others have described as a model for health reform, then rattled off a list of history books that told the fuller story. Sure enough, these books recount that from the time of Hippocrates into the 19th century, medicine made scant progress. “The amount of death and disease would be less,” Jacob Bigelow, a prominent doctor, said in 1835, “if all disease were left to itself.”

(tags: Health_Care)

The merry month of July 2009 had barely witnessed the spectacle of Al Franken eventually taking his seat as the junior senator from Minnesota when, immediately following the death of Walter Cronkite, Time magazine took an online poll to determine who was now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” Seven percent of those responding named Katie Couric. Nineteen percent nominated Charles Gibson. Twenty-nine percent went for Brian Williams. But the clear winner, garnering 44 percent, was Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Either I missed it, or the poll failed to specify, in that wonderfully reassuring way that polls purport to do, what had been its “margin of error.”

(tags: funny_stuff)

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable ­past.

(tags: Central_Asia)

(tags: Mathematics)

During one of our first conversations, Brent James told me a story that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from a doctor. For most of human history, James explained, doctors have done more harm than good. Their treatments consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea and, most common of all, bleeding their patients. James, who is the chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, a network of hospitals and clinics in Utah and Idaho that President Obama and others have described as a model for health reform, then rattled off a list of history books that told the fuller story. Sure enough, these books recount that from the time of Hippocrates into the 19th century, medicine made scant progress. “The amount of death and disease would be less,” Jacob Bigelow, a prominent doctor, said in 1835, “if all disease were left to itself.”

(tags: Health_Care)

The merry month of July 2009 had barely witnessed the spectacle of Al Franken eventually taking his seat as the junior senator from Minnesota when, immediately following the death of Walter Cronkite, Time magazine took an online poll to determine who was now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” Seven percent of those responding named Katie Couric. Nineteen percent nominated Charles Gibson. Twenty-nine percent went for Brian Williams. But the clear winner, garnering 44 percent, was Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Either I missed it, or the poll failed to specify, in that wonderfully reassuring way that polls purport to do, what had been its “margin of error.”

(tags: funny_stuff)

It was once the “land of a thousand cities” and home to some of the world’s most renowned scientists, poets, and philosophers. Today it is seen mostly as a harsh backwater. To imagine Central Asia’s future, we must journey into its remarkable ­past.

(tags: Central_Asia)

(tags: Mathematics)

During one of our first conversations, Brent James told me a story that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from a doctor. For most of human history, James explained, doctors have done more harm than good. Their treatments consisted of inducing vomiting or diarrhea and, most common of all, bleeding their patients. James, who is the chief quality officer at Intermountain Healthcare, a network of hospitals and clinics in Utah and Idaho that President Obama and others have described as a model for health reform, then rattled off a list of history books that told the fuller story. Sure enough, these books recount that from the time of Hippocrates into the 19th century, medicine made scant progress. “The amount of death and disease would be less,” Jacob Bigelow, a prominent doctor, said in 1835, “if all disease were left to itself.”

(tags: Health_Care)

The merry month of July 2009 had barely witnessed the spectacle of Al Franken eventually taking his seat as the junior senator from Minnesota when, immediately following the death of Walter Cronkite, Time magazine took an online poll to determine who was now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” Seven percent of those responding named Katie Couric. Nineteen percent nominated Charles Gibson. Twenty-nine percent went for Brian Williams. But the clear winner, garnering 44 percent, was Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Either I missed it, or the poll failed to specify, in that wonderfully reassuring way that polls purport to do, what had been its “margin of error.”

(tags: funny_stuff)

Over the next year in a joint project, FRONTLINE/World and the Center for Investigative Reporting will report on some of the key issues of climate change with a special focus on the soon to be trillion-dollar carbon trading market it has created. This investigation will be multiplatform with radio, print, television and online reports — all aggregated on "Carbon Watch." We’ll be looking at which of the current proposals to reduce emissions by 2020 really add up; at the hidden interests behind these solutions; and the new constellation of industry players.

(tags: Carbon_Markets)

California Watch, the largest investigative team operating in the state, was created in 2009 by the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. This new team of reporters, editors and multimedia producers will emphasize story telling that holds powerful interests accountable and shines a light on key areas of interest – education, health care, criminal justice, the environment and government oversight. The goal of our reporting is to expose hidden truths, prompt debate and spark change.

(tags: NoCal SoCal)

(tags: Search)

Hopes for a Midwest peace accord were dealt a severe blow Monday, when a bomb ripped through a toll booth on the I-90 Illinois Tollway. The attack, which killed six and delayed westbound traffic for hours, is believed to be the work of Iowa-based militant Lutheran extremists.

(tags: Illinois)

At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, Arne Duncan succinctly summarized the Obama administration’s approach to education reform: “We must build upon what works. We must stop doing what doesn’t work.” Since becoming education secretary, Duncan has launched a $4.3 billion federal “Race to the Top” initiative that encourages states to experiment with various accountability reforms. Yet he has ignored one state reform that has proven to work, as well as the education thinker whose ideas inspired it. The state is Massachusetts, and the education thinker is E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

The “Massachusetts miracle,” in which Bay State students’ soaring test scores broke records, was the direct consequence of the state legislature’s passage of the 1993 Education Reform Act, which established knowledge-based standards for all grades and a rigorous testing system linked to the new standards. And those standards, Massachusetts reformers have acknowledged, are Hirsch’s legacy. If the Obama…

(tags: Education)

Islam is “Russia’s fate.” This was the prediction made a few years ago by Aleksei Malashenko, one of Russia’s leading (and most reliable) experts on Islam. This may be an exaggeration, but perhaps not by much. Demography is also Russia’s fate; if the situation and the prospects were less critical, Islam would be less of a threat. With equal justice it could be said that Russia’s historical misfortune (and fate) are its obsession with imaginary dangers and neglect of real ones. Stalin, it will be recalled, trusted no one, especially not old Bolsheviks, but he was certain that Hitler would not attack the Soviet Union. It is a fascinating syndrome, and one that has again become crucial with the reemergence of Russia as an important player in world politics. And an important player it is. It took Germany a mere fifteen years after defeat in the First World War to reappear as a major power on the global scene. It took Russia about the same time to reemerge after the breakdown of the…

(tags: Russian_History)

The City of Toronto's official data set catalogue - beta version. Access City data, get information about City data and the City's OpenTO initiative and give us feedback.

The City of Toronto is committed to open, accessible and transparent government.

(tags: Toronto)

A few years ago the Genealogical Office in Dublin moved from a back room of the Heraldic Museum up the street to the National Library. The old office wasn't big enough for all the people stopping by to track down their Irish ancestors, and even the new, much larger office is often crowded. Because of its history of oppression and Catholic fecundity, Ireland has been a remarkably productive exporter of people. The population of the island has never exceeded 10 million, but more than 70 million people worldwide claim Irish ancestry. On warm summer days, as tourists throng nearby Trinity College and Dublin Castle, the line of visitors waiting to consult one of the office's professional genealogists can stretch out the door. I suspect that many people have had a fling with genealogy somewhat like mine. In my office I have a file containing the scattered lines of Olsons and Taylors, Richmans and Sigginses (my Irish ancestors), that I gathered several years ago in a paroxysm of family…

(tags: Genealogy)

(tags: NoCal SoCal Texas)

Ok, maybe not every country, but with at least 12 different sockets in widespread use it sure as hell feels like it to anyone who's ever traveled. So why in the world, literally, are there so many? Funny story! The more you look at the writhing orgy of plugs in the world, the sillier it seems. If you buy a phone charger at the airport in Florida, you won't be able to use it when your flight lands in France. If you buy a three-pronged adapter for le portable in Paris, you might not be able to plug it in when your train drops you off in Germany. And when your flight finally bounces to a stop on the runway in London, get ready to buy a comically large adapter to tap into the grid there. But that's cool! You can take the same adapter to Singapore with you! And parts of Nigeria! Oh yeah, and if said charger doesn't support 240v power natively, make sure you buy a converter, or else it might explode. And aside from a few oases, like the fledgling standardization of the Type C Europlug…

(tags: International)

(tags: Movies Star_Wars Lord_of_the_Rings)

Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.

(tags: New_Orleans)

Until last September, the global economic slump was expected to take a fairly limited toll on the Mexican economy. There was even talk of decoupling—that, for once, a U.S. recession would leave Mexico relatively unscathed. Over the past few months, however, this optimism has been replaced by increasingly dire predictions for the country’s near-term economic outlook.

This deterioration is hardly surprising. The global crisis intensified markedly in September 2008, and the true magnitude of the slowdown began to emerge. World trade flows dried up, which is particularly damaging for nations like Mexico whose economic activity depends critically on exports. At the same time, international financial uncertainty led investors to withdraw capital from emerging markets.

As if that weren’t enough, Mexico was confronted with a number of idiosyncratic shocks: a crackdown on drug cartels and local corruption, a flu epidemic and trade disputes with its most important partner.

(tags: Mexico)

RUSI is an independent think tank engaged in cutting edge defence and security research. A unique institution, founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington, RUSI embodies nearly two centuries of forward thinking, free discussion and careful reflection on defence and security matters. RUSI consistently brings to the fore vital policy issues to both domestic and global audiences, enhancing its growing reputation as a ‘thought-leader institute’, winning the Prospect Magazine Think Tank of the Year Award 2008. RUSI provides corporate and individual membership packages offering exclusive access to the UK’s premier forum on defence and security. Through our publications and events, RUSI members benefit from authoritative analysis, insight and networks. RUSI is renowned for its specialist coverage of defence and security issues in the broadest sense. Our expertise has been utilised by governments, parliament and other key stakeholders.

(tags: Think_Tanks)

Despite his 33 years, Valdis Novikovs still radiates teenage energy and a hunger for adventure. Latvia is a small country (population: 2.2 million), and like a lot of young people who felt suffocated and needed to get out, Novikovs left for England in 2005. He worked as a sous-chef at the Hard Rock Cafe in Birmingham and shared a studio apartment with a Polish roommate. When he went back to Latvia two years later, he barely recognized his own country. The moderately ticking postcommunist economy he'd left behind had turned into a booming engine, propelling rapid changes almost everywhere he looked.

"I come back and everyone around me is buying and selling properties," Novikovs says. "People have two luxury cars. They are traveling all over the world. I'm laboring overtime like a fool in England, but I can't do any of that." Sitting in his apartment in Riga, Novikovs speaks animatedly: "I felt like something gigantic was happening in Latvia, and the train was leaving without me!"

(tags: Latvia)

For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher — a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now. The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society — a group that promoted scholarly research in the sciences and humanities — and were enthusiasts of ciphers and other codes, regularly exchanging letters about them. In this message, Mr. Patterson set out to show the president and primary author of the Declaration of Independence what he deemed to be a nearly flawless cipher. "The art of secret writing," or writing in cipher, has "engaged the attention both of the states-man & philosopher for many ages," Mr. Patterson wrote.

(tags: American_History)

(tags: Intelligence)

Eric and I recently discovered a shared fascination with the slew of impossibly named NPR hosts we listen to every day: Renee Montagne, Steve Inskeep, Corey Flintoff, Korva Coleman, Kai Ryssdal, Dina Temple-Raston.

In fact, we’ve often wondered what it would be like to be one of them. A Nina Totenberg or a Renita Jablonski. A David Kestenbaum or a Lakshmi Singh. Even (on our most ambitious days) a Cherry Glaser or a Sylvia Poggioli.

So finally, after years of Fresh Air sign-off ambitions, we came up with a system for creating our own NPR Names. Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.

So I’m Liarna Kassel. And Eric is Jeric Bath. I even have a new nickname for my little brother in Dylsan Rosarita.

(tags: NPR)

New Yorkers go about unaware of what is happening just beneath their feet: Power pulses, information flies, and steam flows. The city’s infrastructure starts just below street level, but it doesn’t stop there.

(tags: NYC)

(tags: Williams)

In depicting the emergence of the world’s languages as a curse of gibberish, the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel makes us moderns smile. Yet, considering the headache that 6,000 languages can induce in real life, the story makes a certain sense.

Not long ago, 33 of the FBI’s 12,000 employees spoke Arabic, as did 6 of the 1,000 employees at the American Embassy in Iraq. How can we significantly improve that situation is a good question. It’s hard to learn Arabic, and not only because it’s hard to pick up any new language. Iraqi Arabic is actually one of several “dialects” of Arabic that is as different from the others as one Romance language is from another. Using Iraqi Arabic even in a country as close as Egypt would be like sitting down at a trattoria in Milan and ordering lunch in Portuguese.

(tags: English)

(tags: Sports)

As the news business continues to confront fundamental economic challenges, a report, released on Oct. 19, 2009 by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, proposes new steps for maintaining a vibrant, independent press, with special emphasis on local "accountability journalism" that is essential to civic life. The report, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," was written by Leonard Downie, Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a Journalism School professor. The report was released at an Oct. 20 event at the New York Public Library, hosted by Lee Bollinger, president, Columbia University; Nicholas Lemann, dean, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; Paul Leclerc, president and CEO, New York Public Library; Julie Sandorf, president, Charles H. Revson Foundation; Clay Shirky, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University; and Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute.

(tags: Journalism)