Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

About John Greenya

John Greenya, a Washington, D.C.-based writer, is the author or co-author of 18 books. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among other publications.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg Pokes at the Foundations of the Ivory Tower

May 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, president emeritus of Washington, D.C.’s The George Washington University, has spent most of his life thinking about higher education, either as a student—he has an undergraduate degree from Columbia, a law degree from Yale, and a master’s in public administration from Harvard—or as an administrator. He retired in 2007 as president of George Washington after 19 years on the job, and has written The Art of Hiring In America’s Colleges & Universities, Thinking Out Loud, and Reflections on Higher Education. Would you reprise what you said about ... Read More

More like this: Education
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What Major League Baseball Is Doing To Keep Bats Inside the Diamond

October 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

“FORE!!!,” the classic warning that a golf ball is speeding in the direction of  your noggin, is not heard on baseball diamonds, but in 2008 it should have been. That was the year Major League Baseball recognized that with more and more bats breaking—2,232 in the last three months of the season—balls weren’t the only thing flying into territory fair and foul.  Ask fan Susan Rhodes, who was knocked into the operating room by a bit of broken bat at a Dodgers game that year. MLB’s four-year effort to solve the problem has resulted in reducing the number of splintered cudgels by ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings
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The Problem of the Too-Quiet Car

March 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Obeying the unwritten law that no good deed goes unpunished, at 8:45 p.m. the day Paris launched its fleet of 250 all-electric vehicles, one of them ran down a woman who didn’t hear it coming. The mayor’s office hurriedly assured Agence France Presse, “It is a road accident like many that sometimes happen in Paris, but at this stage no link can be made between the accident and the fact that the car was noiseless.” Peut- être, peut-être pas, but the incident added, if not fuel then certainly electricity, to concerns about noiseless vehicles. As Eric Bridges, the director of ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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The FCC and Indecency: Here We Go Again

December 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

“It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to air indecent programming or profane language during certain hours...The courts have held that indecent material is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be banned entirely. It may, however, be restricted in order to avoid its broadcast during times of the day when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience.” — The Federal Communications Commission In 1973, a public radio station in New York City broadcast comedian George Carlin’s “Seven ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs
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Bad Credit Reports Put Job Seekers in Catch-22

June 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22 ... Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle." — Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Heller's famous conundrum is often ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Clean Stoves for the Third World

April 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

When the United Nations, Hillary Clinton and Glenn Beck are exercised over the same idea, something must be cooking. Bad pun aside, that's what it is — cook stoves for the Third World that protect life, health and the environment, while answering the age-old question of what's for dinner. In September, the U.N. General Assembly kicked off the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a part of the Clinton Global Initiative promoted by the U.N. Foundation. As for Beck, the Fox News Channel talk show host who is neither for nor against the stoves, he sees Clinton's spending $50 million on ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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ABCs of the Queue

February 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Why do certain things bother you but not others? Like getting in line: When you have to, do you snap and snarl or do you queue up casually with no complaints? Why is that? Kurt Carlson knows. A professor of marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Carlson and his researchers regularly turn up all sorts of interesting and often surprising information on how and why we make decisions. Take getting in line. “Why," he asks, “do people stand in line for so long at Georgetown Cupcake?” referring to a hugely popular sweets shop in Washington, D.C. “And ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Taking Care of the Caregivers

November 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

If you’re a “people-person” looking for a job in a field that’s growing not shrinking — and especially if you are an older “people-person” — you might consider the mushrooming field of at-home direct care. These are not the workers who provide care in nursing homes or hospitals, but those who go to the homes of the elderly, sick or disabled to help them eat, dress, bathe and a number of other tasks. By some estimates, seven of every 10 care workers for the elderly are direct care workers, and the opportunities are growing outside geriatrics: direct home care has been called ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Health
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Emptying a Packed Stadium Quickly … and Safely

June 11, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In the SportEvac simulation and training software, thousands of avatars are in motion at once, realistically representing the chaotic mix of sports fans, security staff, emergency responders and vehicles that interplay during a stadium evacuation. (SERRI)

It's half time, and you're happily ensconced in your favorite seat in your favorite sports arena — in honor of the World Cup, let's say it's Royal Bafokeng in Rustenburg with hopes of following to Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg. Your team has a comfortable lead, and you've just signaled the beer man for a frosty cold one when the public address announcer tells you and your 69,999 fellow fans that the stadium is to be evacuated immediately. What comes next, panic and mayhem or an orderly procession from seat to street to safety? If you've been primed by action movies like Two-Minute ... Read More

More like this: Culture
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Collegiate Commitment to Bridge Achievement Gap

March 23, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

When it comes to graduating more students from college, especially more minority and low-income students, the news is both good and not so good. In December, a report co-published by the Education Trust and the National Association of System Heads (the chief executives of the 52 public colleges and university systems in the United States) painted a bleak picture. "Charting a Necessary Path" reported that of all the low-income and minority students who entered college as freshmen in 1999, only 45 percent of them had graduated six years later. That's 12 percentage points lower than the ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Culture, Education
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