COTA: Leaving tracks—and erasing them—on the info superhighway
If you visit Amazon.com and put a few items in your cart, those items will be there waiting for you when you come back. Convenient? Yes. Expected? Yes. But it goes beyond that.
Opinion
Articles
DINING: A biggie-size Yats is back on Mass Ave
The menu is familiar, but the space is significantly expanded at Yats’ new Mass Ave digs.
LOU’S VIEW: A pair of trios with DK and the Phoenix
Three choreographers make magic while three couples mine marital misery.
More progress needed for primary care docs
Thank you for [Oct. 21 Morris column] on the shortage of primary care doctors from a patient’s perspective.
KENNEDY: Money doesn’t buy happiness
When my mother told me money can’t buy happiness, she was evidently onto something. Recently, the World Happiness Report recognized Denmark—a cold country with one of those high-tax “socialist, nanny-state” governments—as the happiest nation on Earth.
Skarbeck: Use these financial tables to figure retirement goals
There are two key financial tables that can help you plan for retirement. They can be found on the Internet. With them you can input two simple factors—period invested and interest rate earned—and quickly see how your net worth is affected.
Hicks: Better ways to help minimum-wage workers
Much of the rhetoric about the costs and benefits of the minimum wage is pure bunk. Life as an adult minimum-wage worker is tough, but not because of salaries.
RACE: Historic Maple Road has power to transform city
Bus Rapid Transit could revive 38th Street and the neighborhoods that surround it.
COLLINS: A Ted Cruz on every corner in Texas
Have you noticed how many lawmakers from Texas were doing crazy things during the government shutdown debacle?
SOWELL: Does Yellen portend a return to Keynes?
The nomination of Janet Yellen to become head of the Federal Reserve System has set off a flurry of media stories. The Federal Reserve has become such a major player in the American economy that it needs far more scrutiny and criticism than it has received, regardless of who heads it.
RASMUSSEN: Health care, shutdown merely symptoms
Many reporters caught up in the bizarre world of official Washington have written extensively on political tactics and implications of the so-called government shutdown and disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov. Typical was a New York Times headline that blared “Republicans, Sensing Weakness in Health Law Rollout, Switch Tactics.”
BLOW: Billionaires and welfare lines lengthening
The stock market is hitting record highs. Bank profits are their highest in years. The market for luxury goods is rebounding.
DOUTHAT: But what if Obamacare actually works?
It’s likely that HealthCare.gov will be fixed by Thanksgiving and millions of Americans will (finally) be able to get a real look at what Obamacare is selling them.
GARRISON: We’re on a slippery slope to socialism
Central governments are really good at just a few things. Waging war, funding interstate highways (maybe), and protecting our borders (well, sort of) come to mind.
KETZENBERGER: Thoughtful notions from the Vlogbrothers
John and Hank Green, also known as the Vlogbrothers, exchange videos with each other twice a week. Sometimes the videos are funny and sometimes they’re serious, but they’re usually thought-provoking.
MASSON: Juries carry out noble, weighty duty
We ask juries to do a lot in Indiana. In simple terms, juries are a body empaneled to be fact finders as part of the judicial process for resolving criminal charges or civil disputes.
WESTERHAUS-RENFROW: Return to sender: Get a clue about email
If I had a dollar for every time I read a news article or post about a public official getting busted for sending or exchanging inappropriate emails and texts to fellow officials, colleagues and subordinates, I’d be well on my way to financial freedom.
SOUDER: Little common about Common Core
While I have been a bookaholic since elementary school, few books made as much of an impression on me as E.D. Hirsch’s “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.” It was released in book form in 1987, rising to second on the New York Times Best Sellers List behind Allan Bloom’s less-readable but also influential and important “Closing of the American Mind.”
BOEHM: Attack gerrymandering through the courts
Legislatures in Iowa and California have seen the wisdom of eliminating partisan gerrymandering and the polarized bodies it generates. The call for redistricting reform is growing now that the federal government has been shut down and the nation’s credit and the world’s economy threatened.
LANOSGA: Education board desecrated meetings law
In the state law that requires government meetings to be open to the public, there’s a wonderful preamble expressing the philosophy behind the statute. The intent of the Open Door Law, it declares, is “that the official action of public agencies be conducted and taken openly … in order that the people may be fully informed.”