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Is Obesity a National Security Problem?
To defend our way of life abroad we may need to reconsider how much junk food it involves at home. It’s not every day that former generals and admirals speak out about children’s health and education. But last Thursday was one of those days. According to Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit, bipartisan organization led by retired senior military leaders, 75 percent of 17 to 24 year olds cannot enlist in the military because they fail to graduate high… -
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Prison and College: California’s Ridiculous Priorities
The University of California is an awesome institution. Its ten campuses give 150,000 college students a high-quality public education every year and UC Berkeley, UCSF, and Boalt Hall can compete with any super-expensive private school on quality and reputation. UC Davis is largely responsible for California’s fantastic wine, and for some reason UCLA is crazy famous in Asia. It’s a model for public higher education. But the University of California has been getting less awesome because… -
What Can You Bring on the Plane With You These Holidays?
I often carry with me through airport security more than 3 ounces of toothpaste, in the hopes that I can helpfully explain to a TSA agent that toothpaste is not a gel, aerosol, or liquid, but is—by definition—a paste. Sadly, they have yet to try to take my toothpaste. Luckily for me and all travelers, the TSA knows how complicated deciding what fits into the ever-nebulous “gel, aerosol, and liquid” category, especially with holiday specific items,… -
Environmental Writers Disagree About Obama
On Monday, Bill McKibben, the writer, environmentalist, and founder of 350.org (and, let’s not forget, GOOD 100 honoree) took to the pages of Mother Jones to express frustration with Obama’s approach to our common climate problem: Despite the deadline of the Copenhagen conference, Obama placed energy second on his priority list, guaranteeing that health care would occupy most of the year…. And then—as with health care—he left it pretty much entirely up to Congress to write the necessary… -
Picture Show: Breach
In the Spring of 2009, the photographer Richard Mosse traveled to Iraq, where he captured arresting images of U.S. soldiers working and living in what used to be palaces of Saddam Hussein. These visions of western soldiers at rest in imperial palaces are both intensely jarring and oddly playful, and they underscore the seemingly ineffable experience of downtime during a military occupation. The transformation of an imperial palace into a site of temporary housing also speaks to… -
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Is Newsweek’s Sarah Palin Cover Sexist?
Say what you want about the woman, this strikes me as a profoundly shady choice for a magazine cover of a political figure. Pigtails and short shorts? Come on, now. Conservative pundits are pissed, and so is she. But maybe we all should be a little bit? Her confusing use of the third person aside, I agree with her comments. In her words (from her Facebook page): “The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is… -
Waste Not, Watt Not
It’s been a bummer of a week for climate news. The Senate bill continues to languish behind health care and there have been some disconcerting rumbles that it might now be back-burnered even longer as an increasingly spineless nervous Senate focuses on jobs and deficit. And out of Singapore on Sunday we hear that Copenhagen definitely won’t produce a legally-binding agreement, but will rather be the first piece of a “one-agreement, two-step” process, the controversial (and dangerous (pdf),… -
@GOOD Readers Answer: Should President Obama Write His Own Tweets?
Today on Twitter we asked our followers (sounds a little cultish, no?) if they thought President Obama should write his own tweets. We collected some of our favorite responses below. We plan on asking a question to our Twitter faithful once a day, so if you’re not yet following @GOOD, make sure to sign up and participate in the conversation. -
Bart Stupak’s Abortion Contortion
Why the restriction on abortion in the health care bill is unfair. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) tussled with his party’s leadership in the House of Representatives for months before finally making an actionable threat: give me a floor vote on an abortion-restricting amendment, or I’ll kill your health care bill. Under the terms of that health care bill, uninsured Americans will be required to purchase health insurance, and the government will partially subsidize those who can’t cover… -
World Leaders Decide COP15 Is Not the Most Important Meeting After All
It seems that we wont actually be getting any sort of climate agreement coming out of the meetings next month in Copenhagen, and we’ll just be waiting until sometime in 2010 for everyone to get together and make a deal. This is because the Obama administration is pretty sure it’s not going to get climate change legislation done in the next few weeks, while we’re still dithering over health care. And because developing nations feel that…
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Politics
How can we work to solve the world's problems through policy and government?
