Hand-held electronic devices allow users to download several scorekeeping applications that can do what paper scorecards and the eraserless pencil cannot: update statistics and correct mistakes.Credit...Uli Seit for The New York Times The first thing Bruce Levy did upon recent entry into Yankee…

The Great Divide is a series about inequality. Politicians across the political spectrum herald “job creation,” but frightfully few of them talk about what kinds of jobs are being created. Yet this clearly matters: According to the Census Bureau, one-third of adults who live in poverty are working…

"Now that Actual Sunlight is finished, I think I feel more definitively depressed than ever, because I've now done the one thing that I sort of could do, if you know what I mean." For Will O'Neill, the process of creating Actual Sunlight, "a short interactive story about love, depression and the…

I’ve been growing increasingly interested in the interaction between players and spectators in various games, literal and metaphoric. In both kinds of games, spectators need players to create value, and players need spectators to consume it. I’ve been trying to classify the various sorts of “extra”…

The liberal arts are very old and very distinguished, and those who teach them are among the bitterest people I know. University presidents, trustees, and state legislatures are slashing their funding or getting rid of their subjects altogether. (French, German, Italian, and the classics will likely…

Alan Lomax films children in Barbados Rap Genius is the newest example in a long tradition of black music explained for whites, now with a neoliberal twist Alan Lomax was not satisfied that Lead Belly was just playing a song. He wanted to know what the song meant, and suspected Lead Belly’s…

Satchel Paige in 1968. When I was nine years old, it was my belief that a professional baseball player was the most exalted thing a man could be. Ballplayers rivaled the offspring of Greek gods—only marginally mortal and, if they fell, the results were apocalyptic. Some part of me still thinks so.…

News Analysis Teenagers in the parking lot of an A&W drive-in in Hutchinson, Kan., in 1959. PRESIDENT OBAMA’S ambitious goals to curb the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, unveiled last week, will get a fortuitous assist from an incipient shift in American behavior: recent studies suggest…

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles embodied America’s love affair with the automobile in the last century. In this one, it is trying to kick the car to the curb. The city that put drive-through restaurants on the map has doubled bike lanes to 292 miles and expanded light rail by 26 percent in eight years.…

Photo by Tyler Soron. Early yesterday morning, my dad texted me to say he fled his home in Canmore, Alberta shortly before the town declared a state of emergency. By noon, my brother was told to evacuate his home in Calgary’s Mission District, near the Elbow River. Later, friends near the Calgary…

Vancouver is a rapidly growing city with increasing demand for more efficient, more reliable public transit. Since the success of a temporary street car line during the 2010 Olympic Games, Vancouverites have been wondering about the possibility of bringing back the Vancouver street cars. Most…

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Image 1 of 1 Google employees board a private shuttle bus at 18th and Dolores streets in San Francisco, Calif. that will transport them to Silicon Valley on Friday, June 14, 2013. Google employees board a private shuttle bus at 18th and…

Shutterstock Yelp's effort to publish restaurant health safety inspections is just the second time cities have attempted to communicate valuable information in a common language. For the July/August issue of The Atlantic , I wrote a piece discussing the intriguing new initiative between Yelp and…

My friend Richard Laing, a SAR Manager and GIS expert from Ridge Meadows SAR has written an analysis of missing subjects with dementia in the Metro Vancouver area. The report analyses the distance the subjects were found from the Point Last Seen (PLS), and calculated the 25%, 50%, 75% and 95%…

Between the jaw-dropping confluence of mountains and sea, some of the best ethnic food in North America and public transit bliss courtesy of the Canada Line and SkyTrain, Vancouver is much more than an erstwhile Olympic site, or a place to stop over on your way to some other destination. Where else…

“Off the field, he is quiet, friendly and bookish.”

William’s Travels: Vancouver to Portland on public transit June 19, 2013 Over the next few days, the Buzzer blog will be documenting the travels of TransLink’s William Hui while he takes public transit from Vancouver, British Columbia to Portland, Oregon! William is ready for his adventure! Many of…

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, we learned that candlesticks make a great wedding present, that the rose goes in the front on a garter belt and that a young pitching prospect should never, ever -- and I mean ever -- shake off his veteran catcher. Surely, you've seen it by now. But if you…

The battle for Warner Bros is only getting fiercer Netflix has sweetened its offer to fend off Paramount Bartleby Signing the office birthday card A simple task made complicated by work Strava’s public listing will help it race ahead of competitors It needs extra financial oomph to expand its…

Opinion Credit...Jo�o Fazenda A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A…

The actor and author, who suffers from bipolar disorder, broke four ribs when the overdose made his body convulse. He was overseas filming at the time and had to be “taken back to England and looked a

Annals of Technology May 30, 2013 At the No. 8 Hot Pot Restaurant in Beijing, a school bell rings at 5:30 P.M. sharp. Diners sit at old-style wooden desks rather than tables. The menu is a multiple-choice test. Instead of waiters, there are class monitors, who respond to raised hands. Not everyone…

Editor’s letter: Why we published the Ford family story http://t.co/960HJGsOFt

I wrote this very important piece for The New Yorker. http://t.co/3Xad8AbA8g

"Joseph also holds a day job with a local towing company that’s unrelated to his internet efforts, but we can all be grateful for his dedication to making the most of the off-hours."

Once, people measured their leaders -- and themselves -- one clap at a time. The Dionysus Theater in Greece, from a German encyclopedia, 1891 (Wikimedia Commons) And then, suddenly, just when the colors and outlines settle at last to their various duties -- smiling, frivolous duties -- some knob is…

You know how it is, right, ladies? You know a guy for a while. You hang out with him. You do fun things with him–play video games, watch movies, go hiking, go to concerts. You invite him to your parties. You listen to his problems. You do all this because you think he wants to be your friend. But…

The first lady went to Bowie State and addressed the graduating class. Her speech was a mix of black history and a salute to the graduates. There was also this: But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of "separate but equal," when it comes…

Have you ever wondered how the rise of digital currencies will impact on the monetary base, and the effects that will have on seigniorage revenue to governments worldwide? No? Well, this pair of articles by the Financial Times‘ Izabella Kaminska, “Why central banks should take charge of their…

How should policymakers respond to increased automation? asks Ashwin Parameswaran. He has four suggestions: A ‘helicopter drop’, where the government simply prints and sends a sum of money to each individual. Excellent social safety nets for individuals: and absolutely no safety nets for firms. No…

on 05/17/201305/17/2013 Last week, we examined how your cable and satellite bills will pay for Major League Baseball’s billion-dollar TV deals. Now let’s look at what that means for the teams themselves. How does baseball distribute your money? We know that MLB’s new national TV contracts with ESPN,…

Nigel Wright has been parachuted in to lead high-profile talks on the trans-Pacific free-trade zone. He was instrumental in drafting the policy to limit foreign investment in the oil sands. He is a key strategist on job-skills training arrangements with the provinces. But this week, Stephen Harper’s…