Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The Changing War on Terror

May 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bin-laden-compound

Is the United States safe enough? That is the fundamental question being asked by the public, policymakers, and members of the Obama Administration after the Boston bombing. What shape is al Qaeda in now and how does it affect those of us living in the United States? While working at the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center as an analyst and targeting officer I focused on a loose network in Iraq that eventually grew into the al Qaeda we recognize. From my perspective, we are almost witnessing—today—the reverse engineering of al Qaeda back into its initial state ... Read More

More like this: Politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

Will Bike-Sharing Programs Kill More People?

May 9, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bike-share

Later this National Bike Month, Citi Bike will debut in New York City. The ambitious bike-sharing program will launch with 6,000 three-speeders spread across 300 docking stations, numbers that will grow to 10,000 and 600, respectively, when the plan is fully operational. Fittingly, the biggest city in the United States will boast the country's largest bike-sharing program. A 2008 study predicted between 1.4 million and four million tourists will use the system. The fight between cars, bikes, and, to a lesser extent, pedestrian rights is a never-ending source of contention in Gotham—popping ... Read More

More like this: Health
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Weed Makes Kids Better Drivers, According to Kids

April 25, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
marijuana-car

Teens are teens. They smoke weed—and duuuude—they think it makes them better drivers because, like, my haaaaands are clear bro, and it feels like I'm one with the car—yoooooo—does that say something about the human-industrial-car complex or am I just suuuuuper high, according to a recent survey of high school juniors and seniors from Liberty Mutual. Zachary Tracer—Churnalism disclaimer: Zach is a friend—has the report over at Bloomberg: Thirty-four percent of those who have driven while high say the drug makes them a better motorist, and 41 percent said it had no effect, ... Read More

More like this: Science
Tags: , , , , , ,

How Safe Can a Marathon Be?

April 16, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
boston-marathon-smoke

The marathon-as-spectacle is, more than any other sporting event, built on the responsibility and rationality and general non-wickedness of other human beings. You’re at this long, winding, sweeping thing—event really is the best way to put it. It’s a stadium 26.2 miles long. And you’re allowed to be up close to the competitors—cheering them on, handing them water, sneaking onto the course and claiming you've won—at any point. Marathon Day was Boston’s day to not be Boston. That is, the day that all the stereotypes of the city—loud, belligerent, belligerently drunk fans ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , , , ,

Driving a Dead Horse: Making Cars Less Frightening in 1904

February 6, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Horse attachment for an automobile -- U.S. patent 777,369 issued in 1904 [Source: Google Patents]

  Last month the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration proposed a new rule that would require all electric and gas-electric hybrid vehicles to make a noise when they're traveling under 18 miles per hour. This noise would alert pedestrians and cyclists to the presence of a car, since most of us have grown up conditioned to the noise of the automobile on the street -- that relatively loud, gas-powered car that has dominated the roadways of the 20th century. The proposal is currently open for public input but the final rule will be set by next month. Inventors at the ... Read More

More like this: Time Machine
Tags: ,

Drowning in Good Intentions

October 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
shutterstock_96614533-l

When it comes to sacrificing yourself in an attempt to prevent a drowning, Australians Joseph and Carole Sherry may be the ultimate examples. In January 2010, two of the couple's three children, Elise, 14, and Nicholas, 9, were struggling in the surf at a beach south of Brisbane, according to a newspaper account, when Carole, 44, entered the water to help them and apparently got caught in a riptide. Seeing his wife in trouble, Joseph, 42, tried to save her. Instead, both drowned as Elise and Nicholas and their older sister, all now safely on shore, watched in horror. It is a pattern that ... Read More

More like this: Culture
Tags: , , ,

Sarwidi Versus the Volcano

September 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Ash, lava in house

THE WORLD"S ONLY LOW-COST VOLCANO BUNKER is not a high-tech affair. Called the Rulinda—the name is a portmanteau of the Indonesian words for “emergency-protection room”—the bunker is a brick box that can, in theory at least, shelter nine adults from superheated ash for up to an hour. It features walls two feet thick, a door customized to face away from the relevant volcano’s particular blast pattern, and ground-hugging breathing holes that block toxic ash while admitting (mostly) healthy air. Any half-decent mason can throw up a Rulinda in a day or two for about $320. The science in ... Read More

More like this: Environment, September-October 2012
Tags: , ,

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
Tags: ,

Nuclear Disasters: Do Plans Trump Actions?

March 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As Japan’s natural disaster has unfolded into a worst-case-scenario nuclear crisis over the past week, countries around the world have turned inward toward their own nuclear policies. Germany has temporarily shut down all of its plants built before 1980. Switzerland has suspended the approval process for three new ones. The European Union is testing all 143 reactors on the continent for earthquake and flood risk, age and ability to counter meltdowns. And China, which has some of the world’s most ambitious nuclear energy plans, announced Wednesday that it will suspend its program. So ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
Tags: , , , ,

Bedroom Layouts Reflect Ancestors’ Preferences

August 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

As evolutionary psychologists persistently point out, vestiges of our prehistoric past often turn up in unexpected places. Newly published research suggests one of them may be your bedroom. A German study finds our preferences regarding the placement of bedroom furniture reflect the safety concerns of our distant ancestors. According to the paper, just published in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, our choice of room layout is remarkably consistent with the physical environment prehistoric men and women preferred. University of Munich psychologists Matthias Spörrle and ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Findings, NEWS
Tags: , , ,