It turns out Larry Summers is not always wrong about everything! The problem is that, when Summers was a top White House economic adviser, President Obama listened to him at the wrong time, pretty much every time. Take Obamacare: Summers wanted to take the job of launching the Affordable Care Act away from Obama's political team and give it to a health-care "czar," the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. This czar would have been an outsider who knew about insurance and business and technology -- the kind of stuff you want to know when rolling out a massive new health care program and accompanying website. But, oops, Obama resisted Summers, which helped lead to the clownpocalypse of Obamacare's launch, now in its second embarrassing month.
Okay, I get it. The Healthcare.gov website is still glitchy; there are evidently people who are losing their current health insurance plans; premiums continue to rise; and the Republicans along with irresponsible members of the press are blowing it entirely out proportion. Enough!
Today's public transportation systems are becoming simply too big, complex, and popular for humans to maintain. Maintaining this infrastructure is a complex task that's only becoming more complicated with the steady increase in population and the rise of megacities. But we are finding that our greatest assets in tackling these challenges are data and smarter infrastructure software. With sensors and mobile technology, we can finally create the smart networks we need to understand these ever-changing systems.
John Kerry, despite his democratic pretense, has sent a message to the disenfranchised of the Muslim world that the call for representative democracy on the part of the United States is nothing more than a public relations gimmick.
How often do you hear this: "If I leave the workforce, I'll be giving up $x in salary, which barely covers the babysitter's cost"? Rather than analyzing this based on a static point-in-time, it is more accurately thought of as a net present value calculation.
The next few weeks will undoubtedly give us our best shot at ISON. To see it this week, you'll need to venture out in the early morning, around 4 a.m. local time, and look toward the constellation Leo.
Having been married only a year and a half, I've recently come to the conclusion that marriage isn't for me. Now before you start making assumptions, keep reading.
I made a porn. Have I always wanted to film a porn? No. But when James Deen tweeted that he was accepting submissions from regular folks like me to film scenes with him I laughingly turned to my coworker and said, "Oh, let's submit!" I was the only one who submitted.
Everyone talks about Fiddler on the Roof but did they ever see a fiddler on the roof? I had the sculptor Aris Demetrios make a sculpture of a fiddler and I placed it on top of my roof. At night the lights make it visible to everyone.
More than we care to admit, we now pay for the ease and frequency of our communication with the depth of our relationships. And those depths are where true and meaningful human connection resides.
Twelve years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and a decade after the misguided invasion of Iraq, Washington's actual standing in country after country, including its chief allies in the region, has never been weaker.
I really want to focus on the baby. But birth is so damn distracting. It's just looming there, at the end of pregnancy, like this massive Mount Doom with Sauron's fiery eye flicking vigilantly back and forth above. I am definitely Frodo in my birth story, with the wide, terrified eyes.
It's Election Day 2013. Get ready for the spin. Unless something surprising happens, Terry McAuliffe will win Virginia's governor's race, Bill De Blasio will become New York City's mayor, and Governor Chris Christie will win an easy reelection in New Jersey.
You can't predict your life, nor can you engineer the perfect next step, so stop putting pressure on yourself to figure things out. Step forward even if you are afraid or unsure.
The folks making economic policy in Washington are getting ever more resistant to evidence. As we approach the sixth anniversary of the downturn with no end in sight, the nation has been treated to the perverse spectacle of our Treasury Secretary celebrating the sharp drop in the deficit.
Hamed Sinno, the openly gay frontman of the Lebanese band Mashrou3 Leila, is gay. His gay voice represents the entire Arab world. Through his gay songs he captures the angst of the youth, singing about things no one gay has ever sung about in a gay way.
Just one tweet provoked such an active response from my followers, all echoing disapproval. The question is, how many people read that tweet and thought "idiot"?
Music is a universal language, an ephemeral space where people unite around shared passions and at least momentarily forget what may separate them. Few breathe life into this concept as organically as Loreen Talhaoui, Sweden's singing sensation.
Some of the funniest, faultiest, and crudest Sbux spelling slip-ups.
Check out the Milky Way next time you're outside the glare of city lights, and ruminate on the thought that at least 33 billion habitable planets are somewhere up there. But that's just the local population.
After spending time in Scotland earlier this fall, I think I've found the most beautiful castle in the world.
For months, if not years, people in France and abroad have been trying to prove that Marine Le Pen has not changed as much as she would have us believe. Now, in a mere 20 seconds, she herself has torn away the veil and shot herself in the foot.
Virginia early voting turnout data point in a similar direction as the polls that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe is doing substantially better than the Democratic ticket did four years ago.
Whiteness has been a privileged and prized identity in the U.S.; our national culture has made it this way. So when black men select white women and de-select black women, they are doing so in a context of charged racial meanings.
After almost two decades of democracy the world is asking: "what has Nelson Mandela's South Africa done with its freedom?" With the 95-year-old father of the nation ailing, the 52 million South Africans who see him almost universally as a hero are also asking what lies ahead long after "Madiba."
What it comes down to is that black girls are missing representations of themselves in positive contexts. When they turn on the TV, they are missing. When they are looking at the cover of magazines like Vogue and Elle, they are missing.
Violence, uncertainty and unrest go hand in hand with food, water and energy scarcity. Probably no Americans are more acutely aware of this fact than the men and women we have sent into harm's way over the last 20 years.
My suggestion is to switch the focus from other moms, and what other moms are doing, to your own kids. Are your kids happy and healthy being co-sleeping french fry eaters? Awesome!
Millions of LGBT Americans go to work every day fearing that, without any warning, they could lose their jobs -- not because of anything they've done, but simply because of who they are. It's offensive. It's wrong. And it needs to stop, because in the United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a fireable offense.
Dear Aaron, Hey, man. What's up? How's the shoulder feeling? Man alive -- I saw that hit last night and I was all like, "Man alive!"
My nonprofit group, Ceres, has been working closely with Ford and GM for many years as the companies have taken their sustainability journey.
Those who diminish others to raise their own status can no longer escape criticism because now there's a punitive label attached to it. In the current marketplace, being branded a bully is now taken more seriously in the boardroom, in the bedroom, on the football field in the school classroom.