This story was originally published on July 21, 2008. President Barack Obama, who has said his views on gay marriage have been evolving, said today he is personally in favor of allowing same-sex couples to marry. Tuesday, North Carolina became the 29th U.S. state to ban gay marriage in its state constitution. As California last month became the second state in the union (after Massachusetts) to legalize marriage for lesbian and gay couples, opponents of same-sex marriage have warned of dire consequences to the institution of marriage. Depending on one’s point of view, the Rev. Louis ... Read More
Found in Translation
March 9, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
Given the increasingly horrific toll that intensifying drug violence has taken, primarily in Mexico but also in the U.S., it's not altogether surprising that former Mexican President Vicente Fox would define drug trafficking as a problem shared by his own nation and its northern neighbor, the world's largest consumer of illegal narcotics. Although during a recent appearance in California he called his successor, Felipe Calderón, "courageous" for his crackdown on the drug cartels, Fox also declared, "It's time to debate legalizing drugs." In the U.S., one might expect calls for drug ... Read More
‘Squeeze’ Against the Machine
July 14, 2009 • By • 3 Comments
"The silver lining — if there is one — in this horrible [financial] crisis is that for years, the country just wasn't paying attention to how the typical worker was doing," declares New York Times labor and workplace correspondent Steven Greenhouse. "There was so much focus on the wizards of Wall Street and the brilliant entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, but very, very little attention paid to how the average worker was doing. I think the recession has gotten the nation to realize that things are really bad for millions and millions of average workers." Greenhouse has described that ... Read More
Can Development Reduce Poverty?
February 13, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Even in an era when even some stalwart free-market thinkers are opining that only massive government spending can turn our economy around, just about everyone examining inner cities agrees that government is not the answer. Markets have a role, perhaps even a dominant role, in resuscitating urban hearts. But in a time of financial turmoil, when banks seem reluctant to invest even in comparatively good risks, it may be natural to ask: Can development really decrease poverty? Nonprofits like the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City and Washington, D.C.-based Social Compact highlight new ... Read More
Moving Inner Cities Out of the Red, Into the Black
February 12, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Ed. note: Today we begin a three-part look at urban policy, examing here and tomorrow the unrealized potential some see in flailing inner cities, and closing with a look at how the urban poor are fast becoming the suburban poor. The copious amounts of ink, airtime and cyberspace devoted to discussions of "small town American values" in the recent presidential campaign obscured the fact that most people in the United States live not in Mayberry but in metropolitan areas. As the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program noted, "Metropolitan areas are home to 83 percent of the ... Read More
Mine Heir
January 7, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Today in Mice recently sounded the alarm about calls by researchers to move beyond the mouse model of studying human disease and begin using vast databases of human health information — or larger animals like pigs and dogs — in our quest to cure the ailments that afflict us. But before anyone grows too distraught over the prospect of out-of-work rodents (or bloggers), consider this: a Belgian organization is using rats to alleviate two of Africa's greatest scourges: land mines and tuberculosis. Antwerp-based APOPO has trained African giant pouched rats to use their highly developed ... Read More
Academics Oppose 21 as Legal Drinking Age
August 25, 2008 • By • 2 Comments
While most college presidents already have their hands full fundraising in a slumping economy, dealing with a new generation of hovering "helicopter parents" and boosting or maintaining their institution's ranking on best-college lists, the heads of many institutions of higher education have taken on an additional challenge: the legal drinking age. More than 100 presidents and chancellors of U.S. colleges and universities so far have signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, a coalition whose statement declares that having the legal drinking age set at 21 "is not working" and, in fact, has ... Read More
Urban Forest Management Is Up a Tree
August 19, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
It turns out it's not just the disappearance of rainforest trees — mahogany, teak, Brazil nut — that is cause for concern. In a new paper, "Street Trees — A Misunderstood Common-Pool Resource," Indiana University environmental affairs scholars Burnell C. Fischer and Brian C. Steed note that the tree cover in a number of metropolitan areas — the so-called urban forest of street trees like ficus, sycamores, and dogwoods — has declined dramatically. (According to Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit conservation group, Atlanta has lost 60 percent of its tree cover in the past two ... Read More
ED Drugs Break Through Blood-Brain Tumor Barrier
August 18, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
Although it's unlikely to be incorporated into the ubiquitous marketing campaigns for erectile dysfunction drugs, a significant off-label use of the medications may have been identified by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. In a laboratory study conducted on rats, the research team used erectile dysfunction drugs to increase the amount of a chemotherapy drug that was able to cross the blood-brain tumor barrier and thus attack the tumor — without affecting healthy brain tissue. The normal blood-brain barrier serves a salutary purpose, protecting the brain from ... Read More
