* “Why China won’t own next-generation manufacturing.” Maybe. Useful for those of you who provide job training services.
* A Conversation with Jonathan Haidt, on the madness infecting college campuses (and other topics; his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is essential reading).
* My favorite recent RFP: “Promoting Integrated Pest Management in Affordable Housing.” This RFP makes me think of Isaac’s famous rat story. And, seriously, this is a real RFP. Isaac also notes that the adjective “Integrated” could be fraught with confusion in this context.
* “The Insidious Imps of Writing,” maybe.
* “French PM suggests naked breasts represent France better than a headscarf;” I laughed.
* “Architecture for the Internet: A look inside a carrier hotel in Manhattan — a building where different ISPs and network companies check in with one another.”
* “Economists Profit by Giving Things Away:” In short, economists publish their work freely online and that work isn’t hidden behind pay gates. So that means anyone can get ahold of it, which isn’t true in many other fields. This gives economists outsized influence. I find the publishing practices of academics in English lit bizarre (and revealing) in this respect.
* “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun;” important, under-appreciated news.
* “People in Los Angeles are getting rid of their cars.” As Fox Mulder says, “I want to believe.”
* “Electricians, roofers and plumbers have their pick of jobs, and demand is expected to grow.” A point that you will have to leave out of Department of Education proposals, since the DOE is obsessed with conventional four-year degrees, but that you can and even should put this in Department of Labor proposals.
* Is This the Tipping Point For Electric Cars? Charging stations are proliferating.
* Despite SpaceX setback, future of private space exploration is bright.
* “If drivers expect to be prosecuted for committing offenses [against cyclists] they suddenly stop committing them,” a totally unsurprising yet still important point.
* “How the careless errors of credit reporting agencies are ruining people’s lives.” Many of your participants will likely suffer from credit reporting errors, and getting rid of them can be brutal.
* “‘An aggressive proposal that touched a lot of nerves’: Why Gov. Brown’s plan to stem the housing crisis failed.” And why California is going to continue to be ludicrously expensive to live in for a long time to come.
* “Can U.S. Cities Compensate for Curbing Sprawl by Growing Denser?” So far, no; we are choosing sprawl instead.
* “Jay Z: ‘The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail.’” Seems obvious, but when notable people say it it becomes news again. After four decades of the War on Drugs, heroin is cheaper, more potent, and more available now than then.
* “Fancy Dorms Aren’t The Main Reason Tuition Is Skyrocketing:” in public schools, it’s state-level cuts. In private schools, it’s tuition discounting: All those $40K – $60K prices are used to soak the rich families, while most students get discounts in some form.
* “Addressing Peak Energy Demand with the Tesla Powerpack,” or, consider the more direct headline: “Tesla Wins Massive Contract to Help Power the California Grid.”
* “Video killed the radio star: How games, phones, and other tech innovations are changing the labor force,” important for anyone involved in job training.
* “To the four policemen who beat me for checking the health of a sick man in their custody,” it is distressing that my first instinct is to add, “More of the usual” to this story (hat tip Chris Blattman).
* “American against itself: does the future belong to authoritarians, left and right?”
* “Trumpism Is the Symptom of a Gravely Ill Constitution: No matter what happens in November, the sickness may be terminal.” In other words, we may be reaching the limits of non-parliamentary political systems, though there is no good way to get from where we are now to where we might like to be. Still, it is possible to imagine another constitutional convention in my lifetime.
* “Sticker shock in Los Angeles Housing:” or, why you should’d live in California. Granted I am writing this from NYC, which faces similar NIMBY and cost challenges. But I am also planning to move, in part because of the effects of NIMBY and cost challenges.
* “‘Do Not Resist’: A look at the normalization of warrior cops.”
* “Anti-globalists: Why they’re wrong.”
* A real-life Project NUTRIA: “Laundromat with a classroom: Charleston’s outreach to underserved kids.” Some of this article’s sentences could be ripped from our proposals.
* Prosecutors who withhold or tamper with evidence now face felony charges.
* “In Rural Bangladesh, Solar Power Dents Poverty.”
* “To end the affordable housing crisis, Washington needs to legalize Main Street.” Local NIMBYs are impeding housing growth and enabling soaring housing prices.
* “House of Cards: How the Chicago Police Department Covered Up for a Gang of Criminal Cops.” A timely reminder of the challenges your participants may face.
Any idea of where you’re going? I feel the same way about NYC now. It gets less and less viable to live here by the year.