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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Why has Argentina been unable to sustain a democracy? Why has establishing Iraq’s been particularly dicey? According to the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, it comes down to schools. If we want stable democracies, he writes, we need to invest in education. Being a numbers guy, though, he doesn’t just argue the case philosophically. He’s got data to back him up.

What kind of data? The kind that shows that the more educated a country is, the…

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In the minds of far too many Americans, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are little more than ideas: words and phrases bandied about by politicians, dinner party talking points for the moderately informed, momentary segments blipped above ticker stats on cable news shows. Yet no matter how far away those zones of conflict may seem, they are, in fact, quite real and quite consequential. And the men and women who’ve actually served on the front…

Read & Discuss

The soldiers we have lost and will lose will not be forgotten. This is a quick few questions to approach this topic related to design. Please feel free to comment and throw out some creative ideas and concepts.How can design be implemented to remember a lost American Soldier? What type of product would..
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I have to admit, I was intrigued. I’m a Canadian, and I was intrigued.

Obama’s going to cut the U.S. deficit in half. In half! 50%!

But I have to ask: How?

Before we look at the specifics, we should clarify one thing: the difference between the deficit and the debt. I can’t tell you how many people use these terms interchangeably, but they mean distinctly different things.

Simply put, a deficit is an annual loss, and alternatively, a…

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Please ignore my last post....So I was watching the Rachel Maddow show the other day and as a special gust she had on a soldier who had served at the Guantanamo prisoner facility as a guard. Now after all the war stories that we have heard, this one wasn’t really different…you know..prisoner abuse,..
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One college student ditched class to photograph Iraq. Chad Cress is an aspiring photographer in his senior year at Biola University in La Mirada, California. Last fall, while his classmates were preparing for final exams, he and some friends hopped into a plane and flew to Iraq. It was a chance opportunity,..
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So, the U.S. military has recently introduced a new preemptive tactic in the war on terror: Giving cows to the widows of Iraqis we’ve killed. Marine Major Meredith Brown put together the “Cows to Widows” program which has so far provided cows to 50 women whose husbands have been killed in the fighting over the past few years. The idea, NPR explained recently,  is to “help the women become self-sufficient, and to keep them from possibly…

Read & Discuss

Why has Argentina been unable to sustain a democracy? Why has establishing Iraq’s been particularly dicey? According to the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, it comes down to schools. If we want stable democracies, he writes, we need to invest in education. Being a numbers guy, though, he doesn’t just argue the case philosophically. He’s got data to back him up.

What kind of data? The kind that shows that the more educated a country is, the…

Read & Discuss

The soldiers we have lost and will lose will not be forgotten. This is a quick few questions to approach this topic related to design. Please feel free to comment and throw out some creative ideas and concepts.How can design be implemented to remember a lost American Soldier? What type of product would..
Read & Discuss

I have to admit, I was intrigued. I’m a Canadian, and I was intrigued.

Obama’s going to cut the U.S. deficit in half. In half! 50%!

But I have to ask: How?

Before we look at the specifics, we should clarify one thing: the difference between the deficit and the debt. I can’t tell you how many people use these terms interchangeably, but they mean distinctly different things.

Simply put, a deficit is an annual loss, and alternatively, a…

Read & Discuss

Please ignore my last post....So I was watching the Rachel Maddow show the other day and as a special gust she had on a soldier who had served at the Guantanamo prisoner facility as a guard. Now after all the war stories that we have heard, this one wasn’t really different…you know..prisoner abuse,..
Read & Discuss

So, the U.S. military has recently introduced a new preemptive tactic in the war on terror: Giving cows to the widows of Iraqis we’ve killed. Marine Major Meredith Brown put together the “Cows to Widows” program which has so far provided cows to 50 women whose husbands have been killed in the fighting over the past few years. The idea, NPR explained recently,  is to “help the women become self-sufficient, and to keep them from possibly…

Read & Discuss

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…

Read & Discuss

In the minds of far too many Americans, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are little more than ideas: words and phrases bandied about by politicians, dinner party talking points for the moderately informed, momentary segments blipped above ticker stats on cable news shows. Yet no matter how far away those zones of conflict may seem, they are, in fact, quite real and quite consequential. And the men and women who’ve actually served on the front…

Read & Discuss

One college student ditched class to photograph Iraq. Chad Cress is an aspiring photographer in his senior year at Biola University in La Mirada, California. Last fall, while his classmates were preparing for final exams, he and some friends hopped into a plane and flew to Iraq. It was a chance opportunity,..
Read & Discuss