Plank
Sure, the 2012 inauguration isn’t the glittering bacchanal of four years ago. All the same, it’s not your average Washington weekend, either. Here’s an initial report from a Saturday night spent among the parties for the powerful, the not-so-powerful, and the folks somewhere in the middle: KIDS BALL READ MORE >>
When President Obama walks down the steps of the Capitol on Monday, preparing to take the Oath of Office, don’t be surprised if he does a little happy dance along the way. READ MORE >>
Most new religions, like most new businesses, die a quick crib death. Scientology, however, is not about to disappear. Scholars put the number of adherents in this country at about 25,000—a far cry from the millions of members its leaders claim, but hardly insignificant for a group that was founded about 50 years ago. READ MORE >>
Lance Armstrong: No More Mr. Nice Guy
In 2005, right after publishing his soon-to-be bestseller, Lance Armstrong’s War, journalist Daniel Coyle was asked, “What’s our biggest misconception about Lance Armstrong?” READ MORE >>
The Kick-the-Can Cliche Has Been Kicked Around for Decades
There's a War in Cyberspace over Icons vs. Text
In the physical world, icons are always telling us what to do. No smoking on the airplane. Beware of the road crew ahead. Crap here if you’re a man, and there if you’re a woman. There’s even an icon that says, essentially, “Yes, when I die in a car wreck, you may take my organs and put them in another human body.” And these icons, for the most part, tell us these things without so much as a word. They’re feats of human efficiency: Why force someone to read tedious text when the image of a crossed-out cigarette will do?The digital world, however, is a different story. On the Internet, warnings and directions are often much more complex. How can an icon summarize, for instance, whether to allow Facebook to share your user history or to allow your iPhone to know where you are at all times? You’ll probably understand a website’s terms of service better if you sit down to read them, but you probably don’t have the time or patience for that, instead signing away vast swaths of your personal information without a second thought.The White House thinks this is a problem. Last February, it promulgated a Privacy Bill of Rights decreeing that consumers shall get a clearer idea of what, exactly, a mobile app does with your data (California, meanwhile, has already made its own rules). The app industry, desperate to avoid clunky regulations from Congress, promised to work with privacy advocates to come up with their own standard practice for privacy notifications. Get all the players in a room, the thinking went, and they should be able to hash out an approach that works for everybody. READ MORE >>
Here's a bit of advice when considering Barack Obama second inaugural address on January 21: Don't take anything he says very seriously. For all the hype they receive, inaugural addresses rarely foretell what a president will accomplish in office. In fact, the men who utter grand principles and make big promises every four years often contradict them, willingly or not, soon after they begin their terms. Take a few of the more celebrated quotations: READ MORE >>
Why We Are Here Today: A Letter from Chris Hughes
Home News: On January 28th we’re relaunching our magazine, website, and tablet app. As we bridge the new and old, I wanted to take a step back and reflect on where we’ve come in nine short months. READ MORE >>
David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is in a bind. Not because recent opinion polls put his party a dozen points behind Labour and not even, really, because the British economy continues to splutter along in search of a long overdue recovery. The second of these factors accounts for the first and Cameron trusts that his economic policies will, in time, pay a dividend. READ MORE >>
