Slate

It’s been a rough few years for Rachel Dratch.

Hertsgaard discusses how ecological agriculture can create a sustainable food supply and prevent some of the potential impact of climate change on the world's food supply.

Morozov is currently a visiting scholar in the Liberation Technology program at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He was formerly a Yahoo fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University ...

Few things shock anymore, but it came as a bit of a surprise last week when Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, revealed how little he knows about the making of the budget.

The moment occurred on March 29, when Ryan told a National Journal forum in Washington, “We don’t believe the generals are giving us their true budget.”

Much fuss has been stirred over President Obama’s open-mic remark to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he’ll have more “space” and “flexibility” to negotiate the dispute over missile defense after he’s reelected.

Several Republicans have charged that his remark reflects a secret plan to “sell out” the U.S. missile-defense program and thus “capitulate” to the Russians (who, Mitt Romney seems to believe, are still “our No. 1 geopolitical foe”).

So we can easily agree that seeking a better understanding of the dynamics of the innovation ecosystem is desirable. The point I want to make is that misunderstanding those dynamics through fatuous quantification mechanisms is in fact damaging to the system itself. Talking about the “pace of technological change” is only the tip of the spear of MBA-speak that is stabbing the academy.

Want to hear a funny word? Unprecedented. Things are only ever unprecedented if one’s too lazy to look for precedent. To coin a phrase: There is nothing new under the sun. Oh, wait.

Gen. John Allen, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, testified before Congress this week for the first time since his confirmation, and I haven’t seen such unbridled optimism about a war—any war—since Donald Rumsfeld’s heyday.

“To be sure, the last couple months have been trying,” Allen acknowledged, referring to the Koran burnings, the massacre of 16 Afghan citizens, the killing of U.S. advisers by their Afghan underlings, and other disasters. But, he added, “I am confident that we will prevail in this endeavor.”

This week, the first film based on the blockbuster young-adult book trilogy The Hunger Games will open, crowning its stars heartthrobs and, likely, making Lionsgate, its studio, a mint.

Much discussion has focused on The Hunger Games as commentary on the popularity of reality television; actress Jennifer Lawrence, who stars as the temperamental heroine Katniss Everdeen, said as much in a recent interview. But barely mentioned in the film—if at all—is another, subtler lesson currently in vogue among young-adult fiction: the societal implications of climate change.

Recently, Japan and Korea have begun to express deep concerns about the “ability of the United States to address profound problems in its political and economic system.”