You can thank Israel Zangwill and 1782’s Letters from an American Farmer for your next over-wrought immigration discussion

I’m taking a class right now on international business and cross-cultural misunderstandings — so stuff like Malcolm Gladwell’s “ethnic theory of plane crashes” and Wal-Mart’s failures in Germany — and inevitably, every discussion comes back to the melting pot idea when someone tries… Continue Reading

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Transparent, a new Amazon Prime show from Jill Soloway (and starring Mark Duplass, Jeffrey Tambor and Judith Light) could be the next big thing

Amazon Prime had two original shows (well, two main ones) come out in this past cycle — Alpha House and Betas — and while both were pretty good (IMHO), neither had a cultural resonance on par with something like House of Cards (Netflix) or, let’s face… Continue Reading

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Alan Webber, the founding editor of Fast Company, is running for Governor of New Mexico. Can he win?

You do see people go from the “business / we solve problems” part of the world to the “politics / we talk about problems and periodically solve them” part of the world, although increasingly it feels like there are a… Continue Reading

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How do figure skaters like Gracie Gold, Yulia Lipnitskaya, and Ashley Wagner spin so much without getting dizzy? Thank Malcolm Gladwell.

I’ve been watching the Olympics semi-consistently and some pretty interesting themes have emerged over the first couple of days. I like skiing, for sure, and seeing Matthias Mayer get a gold was cool (sorry, Bode Miller), but what’s been the… Continue Reading

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The base issue with long-term unemployment, and the job search, really just comes back to caring

Americans live in a very partisan world right now, so anyone deemed “a national emergency” — as long-term unemployment has been called — needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because what conservatives and what liberals deem as… Continue Reading

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Ultimately, does China or Russia (or the USA or Chile or someone else) stand to benefit the most from Antarctica?

Everyone is staking their claim to Antarctica these days; China just built its fourth research base there, which is shaped like a lantern. China’s now spending about $55 million per year on the Antarctic; 15-20 years ago, they were spending $20… Continue Reading

The two sisters of Iowa state representative Mary Wolfe appear to be the victim of a double homicide. What happened?

Mary Wolfe is a state representative in Iowa and on Friday, two of her sisters — there are eight children in the family total — were found dead in a house they share in Pittsburgh. An official cause of death hadn’t… Continue Reading

Marcus Smart (black) pushed Jeff Orr (white). Smart is a top college basketball player, but is he now a thug? No.

First, this happened: Then stuff like this happened: Marcus Smart is a thug and seriously lacks composure 👋👌 — Olivia Coiro (@livcoiro) February 9, 2014 Then the Internet dug deeper on the fan in question, and this happened: There’s more info here on Jeff Orr (the… Continue Reading