Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Why Are You So Smart, Aaron Shapiro?

May 22, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
aaron-shapiro

Welcome to "Why Are You So Smart?,” Pacific Standard's newest monthly column in which Noah Davis interviews a smart person and then interviews the smartest person that smart person knows and so on. For the debut Q&A, he asked the smartest person he knew for the smartest person he knew, which led to Huge CEO Aaron Shapiro. The Harvard University and Columbia Business School graduate was employee number 10 at the digital agency, transforming it from a small start-up to a 600-employee and growing behemoth. Shapiro talked about always working for himself, growing up without screens, and what ... Read More

More like this: Education
Tags: , , , , ,

A Simple Way to Ace That Job Interview

March 4, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
(PHOTO: STOCKLITE/SHUTTERSTOCK)

Job applicants are wise to follow a few common-sense rules. Be on time for an interview. Look presentable. Do your research, so you know something about the organization and can explain how you would contribute to its success. Newly published research suggests your preparation regimen should include one additional step: Give some thought to the last time you truly took control over a situation. In two experiments described in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, both job-application letters and in-person interviews were far more effective if the applicant had just recalled a ... Read More

More like this: Findings
Tags: , ,

Lee Baca Wants to Educate L.A.’s Prisoners

April 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca wants to teach criminals a lesson — literally. The top cop of America's most populous county is launching a new initiative aimed at offering education to every one of the 160,000 inmates who pass through his lockups each year. Liberal reformers have long advocated such a course, citing studies showing lower recidivism rates among prisoners who learn while locked up. But it's extraordinary talk coming from the man who runs America's biggest jail system. Baca's Education-Based Incarceration initiative officially launched last year but is still in the ... Read More

More like this: Education, Legal Affairs, May-June 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
Tags: , , , , , ,

T.C. Boyle Interview: Nature and the Novelist

March 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Mankind's relationship with the natural world has dominated the news of late, with terrifying images of tsunami damage and well-founded fears of nuclear contamination. But even during periods when we don’t seem quite so puny or powerless, the topic captivates T.C. Boyle. The much-honored and best-selling novelist often writes about people who take a hubristic attitude toward nature, assuming they can either tame it or bend it to meet their own needs. The natural world tends to elbow its way past their arrogance, or idealism, or combination of the two, vividly revealing the scope of their ... Read More

More like this: Environment
Tags: , , , , ,

Derek Bok on Fixing College Failure

March 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Derek Bok

A longtime critic of higher education, Derek Bok is the author of six books on the ivory tower, most recently Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More, published in 2005. Bok has an insider's view: He was president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991 and acting president from 2006 to 2007, the only person to serve twice in the job. During his first stint, Bok established what is now the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning to help boost the quality of instruction at Harvard. Today, at 80, he is a research professor at the ... Read More

More like this: Culture & Society, Education, March-April 2011, Views Reviews and Interviews
Tags: , , ,

The Ultra-Imperial Presidency

December 16, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Bruce Ackerman

Back in 2006, Bruce Ackerman co-authored the "Liberal Manifesto," a document of protest signed by dozens of prominent intellectuals who condemned the "illegal, unwise and destructive" Iraq war and the "politics of panic" of the administration of President George W. Bush. But Ackerman, a professor of law and political science at Yale and the author of the new book The Decline and Fall of the American Republic, is worried about more than one unenlightened man in power. He believes that a runaway U.S. presidency could someday be the springboard for an authoritarian takeover. He wants to shake ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2011, Politics, Views Reviews and Interviews
Tags: , , , ,

Europe’s Muslims Get to be the Continent’s New Jews

December 12, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

In part two of the Miller-McCune interview with Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, we explore the various manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, from the banning of minarets and religious clothing to the rise of ultra-right wing anti-Islam parties. Aslan — the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, published this month — addresses the mythos surrounding Europe's Muslim population while offering some positive alternatives to the negative rhetoric and fear-mongering perpetrated both in Europe and ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
Tags: , , , , ,

Censorship in Shades of Black and Gray

December 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
John Kampfner

The London-based Index on Censorship wanders the world in defense of freedom of expression, from repressive regimes where its contacts can't even name themselves publicly to courtrooms where Twittering wags face hard time. Founded to uphold basic freedom for writers being squashed by the then-Warsaw Pact nations, Index has evolved into a sprightly academic journal, a savvy website and a campaigner against abuses everywhere. But John Kampfner, its chief executive since 2008, doesn't see these issues in the stark black and whites of so many campaigners for human rights, but more in grays, a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Legal Affairs
Tags: , , ,

Is Islam ‘Worse’ Than Any Other Religion?

December 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Reza Aslan

A recent Pew Center poll reports that 18 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim, thanks largely to a politicized misinformation campaign. The attitude behind the numbers—the notion that Obama’s purported Islamic faith makes him untrustworthy and a threat to our national security—underlies a troubling pattern. Consider Pastor Terry Jones' aborted "Bonfire of Korans," Newt Gingrich's remarks comparing organizers of lower Manhattan's Islamic cultural center to Nazis, and Oklahoma's pre-emptive strike against Shariah law and you can see why the term "Islamophobia," so in ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
Tags: , , , ,

What We Miss When We Obsess Over Obesity

August 11, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Obesity

Just as Congress was concluding a contentious year of debate by passing legislation to overhaul the health care system, a revealing look at lifestyle, income and mortality was published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. It followed a cross-section of American adults to determine precisely which factors drive us to an early death. Some of the answers were expected. Cigarette smoking. A sedentary lifestyle. Being poor. One well-publicized issue did not make the list: Obesity. For all the breathless media coverage of our collective weight gain over the past few decades, it turns ... Read More

More like this: Health, September-October 2010, Views Reviews and Interviews
Tags: , , ,