Obama had his “Sputnik Moment,“ when standardized test scores around the world pointed to the mediocrity of American students in reading, math and sciences. There is now a major mantra coming from Washington to all state capitals: the “race to the top” is on, and it doesn't include a continuation of the downward spiral of test scores. The new modus operandi: Leave aside achievement throughout the years in high school, the stream of G.P.As., the difficulty of courses taken during the years in 9 to 12, and any creative projects done by students.  read more »

Pogróm is a word with Yiddish origin, and is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently, to destroy, or to devastate a town."

Eric Pickles, British Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, is planning to demolish, destroy, and devastate half of Dale Farm, on Oak Lane, Crays Hill, near Billericay.  read more »

Travel by intercity bus is growing at an extraordinary pace: reflecting a rise in travel demand, escalating fuel prices, and investments in new routes. This confluence of factors has propelled scheduled bus service between cities to its highest level in years and has made the intercity bus the country’s fastest growing mode of transportation for the third year in the row.  read more »

In Downtown: It's Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, Robert M Fogelson says that downtowns are a uniquely American phenomenon. He refers to downtown as the commercial cores with high building densities that form "canyons" that, in some smaller urban areas, might be only a block long to a mile or more long.  Fogelson demonstrates that downtowns in the United States are largely a creation of rail transit (subways or metros, street cars and their predecessor horse cars).  read more »

The Wall Street Journal recently listed the Top 10 Dying Industries, via research firm IBISWorld. Some industries didn’t just see temporary decline during the recession – some won’t recover and will slowly (or quickly) disappear. IBISWorld’s data format is a little different than ours, and its categories are somewhat obscure, but we thought it would be interesting to pull together a similar table with the associated job data.  read more »

Entrepreneur Dick Smith wants Australian families to be subject to China-like population doctrine. Families should be limited to just two children, the father of two and grandfather of six says, because our population growth is something like ‘a plague of locusts.’

Yet in reality, as in many other advanced countries, our population crisis may have more to do with having too few --- specifically younger --- people than too many.  read more »

One of my girlfriends just invited me to attend her wedding ceremony next month. In our short conversation, I learned that she and her husband have already moved into their brand new, three-bedroom condo (we barely have any detached houses, called villas, in China), purchased a new car, and will have three separate wedding ceremonies: in the groom’s hometown, the bride’s hometown, and the city where they currently live. Based on this description, you are probably picturing a couple in their late 30s who must hold high-paying respectable jobs.  read more »

Over the past decade urbanists, journalists and politicians have hotly debated where Americans were settling and what places were growing the fastest. With the final results in from the 2010 Census, we can now answer those questions, with at least some clarity.

Not only does the Census tell us where people are moving, it also gives us clues as to why. It also helps explain where they might continue to go in the years ahead.  This information is invaluable to companies that are considering where to expand, or contract, their operations.  read more »

Yuri Gagarin was my hero. For a child just nine years old on 12 April 1961, the day he flew into space, he appeared intrepid, unassuming, and cool. Above all, he appeared in black and white. This was not the glossy, sunlit, bright blue Florida-sky ethic of American efforts in space, all NASA aluminium foil and silver crewcuts in magazines such as Life. No, with Gagarin there was something grittier, more documentary, something altogether scarier than Cape Canaveral.  read more »

Those who run the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority evidently believe that, since the Consent Decree that forced it to improve service to its bus riders has expired, they are free to rewrite history to justify Metro's elimination of nine bus lines, its reductions in service on eleven more, and its overall elimination of four percent of its bus service hours by attempting to show that MTA bus service is little utilized and not cost-effective.  read more »