No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
Category: World
Green Illusions: The Limits of Alternative Energy
Carbon isn’t the whole story. When you count toxic sludge from making solar panels, noise from windmills placed too close to residential areas, or changes in land use patterns from cultivating biofuel crops, you find that alternative energy has negative externalities of its own that offset its low-carbon benefits at least in part, and sometimes entirely.
The Mayans Won’t Kill Us, But the Internets Might
There is a slim chance we could all wake up on the morning of December 22, blink a couple of times as we take our last breath, and stare off into the deep black void of space and realize that the Mayans were onto something.
News Adventures
In a recent issue of the beloved comic book, Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, quits his job as a journalist at the Daily Planet because the paper has gutted its news coverage. Is the outlook for newspapers really so dire that even superheroes have given up on them?
New York après Sandy? Le conte de deux cités
S’il y a une chose dont je vais me souvenir de cette semaine cauchemardesque, c’est à quel point la ville était séparée en deux. Pendant une semaine, il y avait deux Manhattan. L’équateur électrique a été tracé à la 25e Rue de Manhattan. Au nord, le confort. Au sud, la galère. Cette démarcation a créé deux espèces de New-Yorkais, ceux qui avaient l’électricité pour qui c’était “business as usual” et ceux vivant dans ce qu’on a surnommé “SoPo”, le quartier “South of Power”.
