FLYP - Think Again

The End of the Astronaut?

Greg Emerson Bocquet — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:54:44 +0000

After months of anticipation, the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee [LINK], a panel of experts tasked with evaluating both the ends and the means of the U.S. space program, came back with its recommendation last week: “The committee finds that no plan compatible with the FY 2010 budget profile permits human exploration to continue in any meaningful way.”

Planning for Pandemic: Who Lives, Who Dies and Who Decides?

Greg Emerson Bocquet — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:27:04 +0000

Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, anthrax attacks: if the United States were a 233-year-old on Medicare, the past few decades would have seen her take repeated visits to the emergency room. As a potential swine flu pandemic threatens to send the nation back to the hospital this fall, our understaffed and under-equipped emergency rooms are forcing crisis planners to make some difficult choices about rationing care.

Hispanic Pride

AJ Block and Sara Lombardi — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:36:38 +0000

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s ascension to the Supreme Court this August gave Latino and low-income communities across America cause for celebration. As the former mayor of San Antonio, Henry Cisneros, explained in FLYP's Bienvenidos to the New America, Sotomayor's rise from her childhood in a Bronx housing project to one of the country's highest posts is another step in the ongoing evolution of the representation—and perception—of the Hispanic population in the U.S.

What the Unemployment Numbers Don't Say

Alan Stoga — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:51:42 +0000

The unemployment numbers released today show that the end of summer has not brought us the end of the recession. Headline numbers show the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to be 9.7 percent, or 14.9 million people. That’s 5.4 million more people than a year ago—and still growing.

Katrina’s Lasting Legacy

Lindsey Schneider — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:18:04 +0000

Saturday, August 29, marks the four-year anniversary of the morning when Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the coast of Louisiana. Within hours, the storm had breached nearly every levee around New Orleans, causing unprecedented devastation—an estimated $89.6 billion in property damage—and an untold number of deaths throughout the region.

Disarming the Cartels

Beth Anne Macaluso — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:49:07 +0000

According to a recent report from the Associated Press, Mexican authorities are initiating a widespread campaign to destroy almost 80,000 illegal weapons—seized primarily in raids against drug cartels—that have been held for a decade or more in government warehouses. Even after the housecleaning, more than 35,000 weapons, which the government requires for evidence in criminal investigations, will still remain in storage. Given that Mexico has some of the world's strictest gun laws, this astounding quantity of weapons immediately raises a question: where all the guns are coming from?

Call for a Nationwide Kiss-Off

Sean Piazza — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 16:40:44 +0000

Nearly two months after the California Supreme Court decision to uphold a state ban on gay marriage, the relationship between the gay community and opponents of same-sex marriage continues to sour. An especially tense relationship for gays and lesbians has developed with the Mormons’ Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), which was among the most active and potent supporters of the legislation in California, known as Proposition 8.

Apollo Remastered

Greg Emerson Bocquet — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:53:01 +0000

You would think that the brilliant minds behind man’s first visit to the moon would be meticulous in their attention to detail, but new footage of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s famous moonwalk proves that even the best and brightest can let some things fall through the cracks.

Upcoming Earthquakes?

Lindsey Schneider — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:12:09 +0000

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have been monitoring seismic activity near the San Andreas fault, and found that underground stress is building at an alarming rate. According to a report first published by Science and reported by MSNBC, more than 2,000 tremors have been recorded between July 2001 and February 2009. The tremors have lasted from a few minutes to half an hour and could signal an upcoming quake of magnitude-6.0 or higher.

Uyghurs Rising

Lindsey Schneider — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:50:05 +0000

Since Sunday night, bloody clashes between the Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese have been breaking out in the Xinjiang province in China. As FLYP reported last August, the region has experienced continual ethnic violence between the 8.4 million Uyghurs and the Han, who make up a 91-percent majority in the country.

Color Those Green Shoots Brown

Alan Stoga — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:21:58 +0000

For weeks, pundits and politicians have been talking optimistically about the “green shoots” of economic recovery, as though the worst of what’s now called the “Great Recession” is over. However, with the announcement that 467,000 more jobs disappeared in June—and the unemployment rate ratcheted up to 9.5 percent—it’s clear that the end is nowhere in sight.

Madoff Pays

Matthew Schaeffer — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:49:23 +0000

Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff will be spending the remainder of his life behind bars for operating one of the largest financial scams in Wall Street history. In handing down the 150-year sentence, Federal Judge Denny Chin called the 71-year-old's crimes, which bilked thousands of investors out of an estimated $65 billion, “extraordinarily evil.”

Who Are You Calling An Immigrant?

Alan Stoga — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:14:29 +0000

One of the myths in the debate about Hispanics and immigration is that all Mexican-Americans and other Latinos are recent arrivals. (See FLYP’s Bienvenidos to the New America). The reality is different: Hispanics were living in what eventually became the United States before the American Revolution, and the 1930 Census reported that there were 1.3 million people of Mexican origin living in the country.

New Look at Saturn’s Rings

Lindsey Schneider — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:03:31 +0000

As the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft continues its exploration of Saturn and its moons, it seems every new transmission provides scientists with a fresh bounty of intergalactic marvels.

More Stressed Stress

Alan Stoga — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:36:13 +0000

FLYP’s criticism of the government’s recent big bank stress tests as being less than objective has been echoed by German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck. In an amazing breach of the usual governmental habits of speaking obscurely, Steinbrueck said the stress tests are “therefore worthless because the central bank exercised influence as well as the Treasury."

The Million Word Mystery

Lindsey Schneider — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:49:17 +0000

The media has been abuzz for the past few weeks over the approaching inclusion of the millionth word into the English language. The Global Language Monitor, an organization in Austin, Texas, predicted that the great event would happen at precisely 10:22 a.m. on June 10.

Foxx’s “Hoax” and Gay Rights

Sean Piazza — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:53:38 +0000

This past month, for all intents and purposes, might be referred to as one of the watershed moments of the gay rights movement.

100 Days and Counting

James R. Gaines — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:18:14 +0000

On his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama told a town hall at Fox Senior High School in Arnold, Missouri, that the challenges of the present “call on us to clear away the wreckage of a painful recession—but also, at the same time, lay the building blocks for a new prosperity. And that’s the work that we’ve begun over these 100 days.”

Swine Flu: The News to Listen For

James R. Gaines — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:05:01 +0000

The “swine flu” that has broken out in the U.S. and Mexico is in fact a virus combining the RNA of pigs, birds and humans. Too little is yet known about its characteristics and spread to make a definitive judgment about the threat it represents—especially in the U.S., where cases have followed a normal course for influenza and no one has died.

Buddy, Can You Spare a Job?

Alan Stoga — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:31:42 +0000

Summits are one thing, jobs are another. Even as world leaders at the G-20 summit congratulate themselves on avoiding a catastrophe—but not actually agreeing to very much—unemployment in America has continued to soar.

Visions of Virtual Culture

James R. Gaines — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:10:10 +0000

A FLYP conversation on Web-inspired identity crises for journalism and art: After the revolution, what will newspapers and museums look like?

Will “Smart Power” Work in Pakistan?

James R. Gaines — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:57:53 +0000

The first test of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deployment of U.S. “smart power”—coupling “hard” military power with economic and political aid, cultural exchanges and imaginative forms of public diplomacy—could be Pakistan. Certainly, that country will be among its severest tests.

Prop 8 and Your Wallet

Sean Piazza — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:44:29 +0000

In the last few months of “firsts” and historical milestones, it seems many people—through the rose-colored glass—somehow have forgotten one significant setback of November 4: the passage of Prop 8. Considering the economic recession (for you optimists) / depression (let’s be honest) of the past year, let’s consider the gay marriage initiative in terms of economics.

Dollar Diplomacy, Chinese Style

Alan Stoga — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:00:38 +0000

During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent stop in Beijing, the Chinese leaders were polite when asked in public about their massive holdings of U.S. government securities. Their standard language these days is: “we have always managed the foreign exchange reserves with a long-term, strategic perspective, combining safety, liquidity and profitability,” and “overall, China’s assets are safe.”

Detroit's Second Life: An Urban Planner's View

James R. Gaines — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:00:14 +0000

What will post-meltdown, post-industrial America look like? A terrific story in the latest Atlantic addresses the subject of FLYP’s current-issue cover story on Detroit. “Perhaps no major city in the U.S. today looks more beleaguered,” writes the Atlantic’s Richard Florida.