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Daily Bafflements
December 18, 2014
• Current events, summarized. (Via Jody Avirgan.) • We hear about plagiarism in journalism a lot, but what about plagiarism in grant applications for education funds? One Nevada organization copied and pasted its “research” from a Brookings Institution report, ...

Good Politics, Bad Policy: Our Disastrous War on Drugs
December 17, 2014
Recently Mexico’s largest newspaper El Universal declared the global War on Drugs un fracaso total–a total failure. Well, I guess they should know: America’s forty-plus-year tough-love drug enforcement strategy, and Mexico’s willingness to be co-opted into putting the ...

Daily Bafflements
December 17, 2014
• Happy Hannukah, everyone. For your pleasure: “Texas Gov. Rick Perry may not be dancing with rabbis this Hanukkah season, but the Lone Star State’s outgoing chief is still looking to find common ground with the Chosen,” reports CNN. “Perry released a ...

Agreeing to Disagree on Torture
December 16, 2014
Reflecting on his brutal interrogation by the Gestapo, the Austrian essayist Jean Améry described torture as a psychic annihilation, an experience that obliterated the social world. In his book At the Mind’s Limits, he argued that humans took for granted an assumption that ...

Daily Bafflements
December 16, 2014
• Our fair city is in the running to host the Olympics in 2024, and not everyone is excited about it. “The average pricetag for hosting a Summer Olympics is $15 billion,” according to the No Boston Olympics group. “That’s more than what the Commonwealth of ...

Working Woes at the Strand, Illustrated
December 15, 2014
As Borders, B. Dalton, and many other big chain bookstores get kicked out the door by Amazon, a few privately-owned outposts still provide a respite for book-lovers who like to both browse in brick-and-mortar shops and support local businesses. Some of the best-known independent ...

Daily Bafflements
December 15, 2014
• A new study has found that increased working hours are to blame for Americans’ chronic, collective sleep deprivation. • The UK’s Labour party is pushing for a new law to limit unpaid internships to a month, after which employers would be required to pay ...

Experiments in Extreme Luxury
December 12, 2014
In their unending quest to keep the attention of their wealthiest and most fickle customers, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, and other airlines have been beefing up their luxury travel options lately—from offering multi-room apartments in first-class sections, to allowing passengers ...

Daily Bafflements
December 12, 2014
• “There were some who took to Twitter to express their disappointment in the absence of a much-anticipated new gown on the final evening of the [royal] couple’s tour” is an actual sentence that appeared in the actual New York Times yesterday. • If you missed it, ...

Getting Crumbs in Portland’s Food Revolution
December 11, 2014
In the 1970s, Portland, Maine was a typical New England seaport, with a typical working waterfront slum that that smelled like fish. Trendy tourists weren’t coming ashore from cruise ships, and while there were restaurants—mostly Italian—none were that special. Things ...

Daily Bafflements
December 11, 2014
• Good morning! Did Congress just quietly open the door for wealthy donors to give ten times more to political campaigns than they were previously allowed? • Speaking of donors, ProPublica explains the weird legal loopholes involved in “donor-advised” ...