A Visit Down Under

Why am I heading to Australia? I’ve been writing about the global economy for going on three years now, mostly covering bleak stories from economically depressed places, from America’s heartland to West Africa. For a change of pace, my assignment editors thought it would be nice to visit a place that’s economically prospering. By most standard economic evaluators, the top-performing countries in the developed world are Canada, the Scandinavian nations and Australia. I’m here to report on how Australia did it, and pick up some stories behind those numbers [...]

Zahar on reconciliation

Here’s an audio clip from the Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar speaking to reporters yesterday in Cairo about what Palestinian reconciliation means [...]

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The butcher, the baker, and the cabbage gelder

As far as tedium goes, nothing competes with filling out a government form. How best to relieve the tedium? Invent stuff. Not out-and-out lie, just get a bit creative (OK, sometimes out-an-out lie: if I were to identify myself as a 90-year-old Azerbaijani woman or a Jedi knight, I would not be telling the truth) [...]

News from Egypt

Today’s front page of al-Dostour newspaper. I’ll have more from Egypt later today in the broadcast [...]

Radiation, Risk and the “Linear No-Threshold” Model

Earlier this month I posted about the longstanding debate over the ultimate death toll from the Chernobyl accident, and a new look at the data by a Union of Concerned Scientist physicist. Lisbeth Gronlund pored through scattered and hard-to-find data on the distribution of fallout from Chernobyl, crunched the numbers based on a statistical model of likely cancers at different exposure levels, and came up with an estimate of roughly 27,000 additional cancer deaths due to Chernobyl. This stands in stark contrast to a widely-quoted UN estimate of roughly 4,000, but also to estimates by Greenpeace and others of 90,000 or more cancer deaths [...]

Big Brains Strike Again

Two back-to-back studies on how big-brained animals thrive in new habitats piqued my curiosity about the real implications of relative brain size. If you heard last week’s science podcast, you know that species with big brains relative to their bodies are more successful than small-brained ones in new habitats. That holds true for birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles—all of which often land in unfamiliar environments due to human trade and travel. Now another study finds that a big brain-to-body ratio helps birds thrive in cities. [...]

Fukushima’s Collateral Damage

Six weeks after the crisis at the plant began, authorities are now threatening to arrest and fine anyone caught within the roughly 20-kilometer zone around the still-unstable nuclear reactors. The tougher stance is a stark reminder to local residents that while the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has become somewhat less critical in the last couple of weeks, it’s still volatile and dangerous. The disaster has also claimed its first victims here in the US – two new nuclear plants planned for Texas [...]

English-only in the US, translating tweets in Japan and satire in Egypt

The English Only movement in the United States is always active during times of high immigration. Now, the movement has got a shot in the arm from the Tea Party. It may help convince lawmakers and voters in the 19 remaining states that don’t yet have a law on their books declaring English to be the official language [...]

Postcard from Bhutan: Gross National Happiness

When you’re a small, landlocked mountain kingdom, wedged between the giants of China and India, with more than 70 percent of your population living in rural areas, 50 percent illiterate, and much of your budget coming from overseas aid and grants, you play to your strengths [...]

From Cicero to Lynne Truss with Robert Lane Greene

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Fukushima vs. Chernobyl–Comparison less useful than ever

Nowhere near Chernobyl. Except sort of. But really, much, much less bad. Or… maybe worse. If your head’s hurting right now trying to keep track of official evaluations of the scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, well, get in line for the aspirin. If not yet the iodine pills [...]

Haiti beats Harvard

At the end of what would have been a game tied at zero-zero, a series of penalty kicks gave Haiti’s national men’s soccer team a 4 to 1 victory over Harvard University. At the final point, the already joyous, heavily Haitian crowd erupted into hysterical cheers and chants of, “Haiti! Haiti!” [...]

Robots in post-quake Japan

In the course of seven years of tech reporting for The World, it’s fair to say that I’ve done my fair share of stories about robots, both for the radio show, and for my weekly podcast. It is also fair  to say that many of those stories have come from Japan, a recognized world leader when it comes to robot research, design, and use. And that’s why it struck a chord with me when Tech Podcast listener James Middleton asked, essentially, “where are the robots?” [...]

Noisy Oceans Could Traumatize Squids

Giant squids are fascinating, deep sea creatures that are so elusive that a live one was photographed for the first time just last year. So it was very unusual for the people of Asturia, in northern Spain to encounter five giant squids on their beaches in 2001. The squids were dead, and the carcasses washed ashore over a two-month period. Four more carcasses were found in 2003 [...]

Fukushima likely not as bad as Chernobyl, but what does that mean?

For four weeks now, the world has watched with a surreal combination of horror and helplessness as the Japanese have struggled to regain control of their crippled nuclear reactors in Fukushima, staunch the flow of radioactivity, and evaluate the long-term impact of the disaster on human health, the environment, and communities near and far [...]