Participatory Budgeting: In a Chicago Ward, Residents Call the Spending Shots
Joe Moore, an alderman from Chicago's 49th Ward, was nearly voted out of office in 2007 by frustrated constituents. So he decided to try something new. With help from the Participatory Budgeting Project, Moore turned his $1.3 million discretionary budget over to the 60,000 residents of his ward, a vibrant neighborhood encompassing Rogers Park on Chicago's North Side. Residents of the 49th – who collectively speak 80 languages, and constitute one of the most diverse communities in America – deliberated and prioritized their needs through research and data collection, and voted ...
Guns and Death: A Love Story
The first reporting I did after my dad died Christmas weekend involved shooting a semi-automatic handgun at close range near Fort Meade, Maryland. My friend and Politics Daily colleague James Grady e-mailed me: "Would you be averse to appearing [along with James, his son Nate, and weaponry expert Steve Hunter] in a video of you firing a powerful handgun at an indoor range as part of a story about the history of the 1911 .45?" I was having trouble writing. My dad had been my muse and confidant and I thought about missing him every day. So when I had a chance to do a story that had nothing to ...
U.S. Scientists Top Research-Fraud List -- How Concerned Should We Be?
A recent paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics showing that American scientists are responsible for most cases of scientific retractions and fraud is causing a stir. The paper's author, Dr. R. Grant Steen, searched PubMed, a leading science research database, and identified 788 retracted papers from 2000 to 2010. Steen's research found that U.S. scientists were lead authors on 169 of the papers retracted for serious errors, as well as 84 retracted for outright fraud. China followed the U.S. with 89 total retractions, including 20 due to fraud. Japan was next with 60 retractions (18 for ...
Weed Among the Ivy? Columbia University Students Held on Drug Charges
"Operation Ivy League," once code for aspirations of getting into a great school, has new meaning as the name of a five-month investigation by New York City police into illegal drug sales on Columbia University campus. Five students were arrested Tuesday on charges of selling drugs in their bedrooms at three fraternities: Alpha Epsilon Pi, Pi Kappa Alpha and Psi Upsilon, and two campus residences. All pleaded not guilty. According to police news releases, undercover officers with the Narcotics Bureau Manhattan North made purchases from students totaling $11,000 for cocaine, marijuana, ...
Genetically Engineered Salmon: FDA Says It's Safe, but Consumers Say 'No Way'
Back in September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that a genetically engineered fish grown in a lab was "as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon," and will "not have a significant impact on the quality of the human environment." Conclusions were based largely on data prepared by AquaBounty Technologies, the company that manufactures the synthetic salmon. "There is a reasonable certainty of no harm from consumption of food from this animal," the FDA wrote. Since then, dozens of consumer and environmental organizations, commercial and recreational fishery associations, ...
Bono Brings the $1,600 Handbag to Africa
I thought Bono knew better. After all, the Dublin-born rocker has mobilized millions for issues pertaining to African development, from debt-relief to climate change to HIV prevention. But in his latest romp through the African countryside, he's brought Louis Vuitton -- maker of the $1,600 handbag -- with him. A new ad campaign shows Bono and his wife Ali Hewson posing as if they have just stepped off a helicopter into the African plains, clutching Louis Vuitton luggage. I can't help but wonder whether "Africa" was shot on location. For all the time Bono has spent there, I'm surprised ...
Should Women Stop Apologizing So Much?
"I'm sorry." Two little words that have come to mean . . . almost nothing. It was a good week for demonstrating just how vapid the apology has become. First, Ginni Thomas called Anita Hill and left a voice mail asking her to apologize for saying that Ginni's husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sexually harassed her nearly two decades ago. Then the Wall Street Journal wrote about the cultural significance of the apology: We apologize more to strangers than we do to loved ones or family, according to new research from the University of Waterloo (in Ontario). To make matters ...
The Simpsons are Lampooned (Unsuccessfully) on Their Own Show
British graffiti artist and activist Banksy has directed a controversial opening sequence for the most recent episode of "The Simpsons," and it's a doozy. In this episode, "MoneyBART," the iconic couch gag sequence starts the way it has for more than 20 years, with the middle-class Simpsons family lined up on their tired orange sofa. But soon the image flickers and the viewer is taken on an extended tour of an underground sweatshop where lines of Asian women stencil images of the Simpsons onto sheets of paper while being watched by a male foreman. At the end of the line, one of the workers ...
Infertility, IVF and Robert Edwards' Nobel Prize: A Thorny Issue Comes to the Fore
Of this year's Nobel Prize winners, the work of British physiologist Robert G. Edwards waited longest to be recognized. His award for medicine comes 32 years after he figured out how to create the beginnings of human life outside the uterus through in vitro fertilization. I, for one, am still amazed that human life can be created inside the uterus, and feel that whoever figured out how to make that happen in a Petri dish probably deserves to be on the national currency. Even more astonishing, IVF is now fairly reliable and predictable -- low rates of complication and high rates of success, ...
Ladies, Want a Career in Science? Want to Have a Family? Pick One
When you read the word "scientist," what image comes to mind? Is it a white man in a lab coat? Now imagine this scientist sitting at a desk. Next to the scientific implements and computers, among the beakers and baubles, are there framed pictures of family? Chances are you did not picture a female. And perhaps not surprisingly, results of a recent survey of 1,300 female and male scientists suggest that female scientists might be making significant personal sacrifices to achieve professional goals. The survey, commissioned by L'Oreal, in partnership with the American Association for the ...
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