Patrice Gilbert, via Associated Press Walter Isaacson in an undated photograph. Walter Isaacson is the author of “Steve Jobs,” the best-selling biography published last month. The following is an edited version of our interview. When did you first meet Steve Jobs? I’ve known Steve off and on since…

This UC Davis pepper-spray incident from yesterday, in which campus police sprayed a group of protesting “Occupy” students who were sitting on the ground, was just brought to my attention. I don’t know all the facts, but as a former cop-turned-academic, there’s one thing I can say. In the police…

David S. Holloway/Getty Images IMAGINE this: It’s Sunday morning, beautiful and quiet, except for the mockingbird practicing comic routines on the sweet gum tree in the backyard. As usual, you get ready and drive your family to church. Everyone is well dressed, and the kids are singing in the back…

IN recent years, we’ve been treated to reams of op-ed articles about how we need better teachers in our public schools and, if only the teachers’ unions would go away, our kids would score like Singapore’s on the big international tests. There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge…

A few days after 9/11, a retired Air Force colonel named Randall Larsen entered the northwest gate of the White House, crossed a courtyard to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, stepped through the front door and stopped dead in his tracks. In place of the usual security checkpoint, there was…

Aimee Davison is showing off her latest work of art, a mouldy pile of paper that makes a pointed message. In the middle of her kitchen sits “Yellow Page Mountain,” assembled from 191 unwanted Yellow Pages directories that she gathered from the streets of Montreal in a seven-hour period. It’s the…

Donate Donate ProPublica Journalism in the Public Interest Home Investigations Projects Data MuckReads Get Involved About Us About Body Scanners Risking Health to Secure Airports Body Scanners In an effort to detect explosives hidden under clothing, is the TSA jeopardizing passenger safety? Full…

The Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act could contain a few surprises. Photo by Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge to the Affordable Care Act , which means a five-and-a-half-hour oral argument before the court this spring, with a ruling…

One reason not vaccinating is appealing: A girl cries during her H1N1 vaccination in Washington, D.C. Photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images. I really want to rail against the parents of the Waldorf school in the Bay Area with the shocking 23 percent vaccination rate for its kindergarten class. In…

A 1998 safety panel was reassured X-ray body scanners wouldn’t see widespread use. Today, despite having a safer alternative that the U.S. government deems highly effective, the Transportation Security Administration is marching millions of airline passengers through the scanners, parting ways with…

LONDON (Reuters) - Superbugs capable of evading even the most powerful antibiotics are increasing their grip in Europe with rates of drug resistance in one type of bacteria reaching 50 percent in the worst-hit countries, health officials said Thursday. In a report on multi-drug resistant bacteria,…

An overwhelming body of research shows that coeducation is better for girls and boys. Photograph by Ableimages/Thinkstock. Feminists tend to be of two minds about single-sex schooling. One group thinks single-sex classes are wonderful (for girls) because they provide a protected environment in which…

I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I’d met…

I went to college when I was 18, like everyone else. But unlike other people, I had never been to school before. The first standardized test I ever took was the SAT. The day I took it was the first time I’d ever been in a high school classroom. It didn’t seem like a fun place. I started college as a…

This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author…

Balibuno’s friends weren’t surprised when his body was found outside a restaurant with bullets in the chest, neck, and head. They knew his failure to pledge loyalty to Bosco, his walking away from Zimurinda, was trouble. He’d been claiming for months that Bosco’s men were arranging his…

In fact, the arrival of Amundsen at the South Pole that day was by no means a certainty, a point that remains one of the least appreciated aspects of the Scott-Amundsen story. Indeed, it had taken an extraordinary chain of events – and lies – to place Amundsen there. By rights, he should have…

Every time you “like” a friend’s Facebook status, sign up for a Nordstrom credit card, rate a Netflix movie, order a magazine subscription, or merely click on a website, you’re leaving behind a trail of data exhaust that up until recently has been like so many discarded Styrofoam cups lying…

He has chutzpah like nobody else. Even as the hacking scandal started to erupt in 2007, and full control of Sky was within his grasp, Murdoch was protesting that hacking was “not part of our culture anywhere in the world”, when it plainly was part of the culture to anyone who bothered to look.…

In 2008 the US financial authorities that were needed to respond to the crisis were in place; at present in the eurozone one of these authorities, the common treasury, has yet to be brought into existence. This requires a political process involving a number of sovereign states. That is what has…

Most Popular MDI Digital version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"? By MDI Digital Advertisement - Continue Reading Below How do I love thee? I love thee with serotonin produced by my raphe Nuclei. I love thee with testosterone receptors deep in my hypothalamus. I love thee with dopamine that…

Why Perl ? Gladly I find myself needing to answer this question a lot less than I did a few years ago. Due to a combination of new talent into our community (many who came to Perl because of awesome modern projects like Catalyst , DBIx::Class , Moose and now Plack ) and a renewed drive toward…

Social Security NO PONZI scheme in the history of the world has ever lasted 75 years. Ponzi schemes depend on garnering an ever-increasing pool of new investors to pay out returns to prior investors. When the potential pool of new investors runs dry, they collapse. This will occur when the scheme…

Lee Celano/Reuters Governor Rick Perry of Texas greeted a supporter during a book signing in New Orleans in June. Rick Perry , the governor of Texas, talks in broad, vague terms on the campaign trail about the need to get America working again. But his words are much more specific — and, now that he…

In a volatile world, anxiety and uncertainty make people a little testy. Cranky people can drag everyone else down by spreading negativity and sowing seeds of doubt just when leaders need commitment. And when everyday crankiness is exacerbated by performance problems, then the merely grumpy can…

I’ve been asked what will be the effect on the market of the iPhone 4S. Actually the question was what would be the effect on the market of there being no iPhone 5. I’d answer that the iPhone 4S is a product designed to compete for two markets: (1) half the current iPhone users who bought a phone…

AllThingsD marks the anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death with Walt Mossberg’s memories of the man, originally published Oct. 5, 2011. That Steve Jobs was a genius, a giant influence on multiple industries and billions of lives, has been written many times since he retired as Apple’s CEO in August. He…

When an attractive young woman from a privileged British family is murdered in Italy, you’ve got a popular crime story. When the person suspected of killing her is an attractive young woman from a privileged American family, you have tabloid gold. When the prosecutor hypothesizes that the victim was…

the WHITE HOUSE President Barack Obama Contact Us Get Email Updates Home Briefing Room From the News Room Latest News Read the latest blog posts from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Share-Worthy Check out the most popular infographics and videos Photos View the photo of the day and other galleries Video…

Steven P. Jobs , the visionary co-founder of Apple who helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday. He was 56. The death was announced by Apple, the company…

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American officials say remotely piloted drone aircraft are a cheap, safe and precise alternative to traditional warfare. Christopher Griffin, via Reuters WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki , the American-born propagandist for Al Qaeda’s rising franchise in Yemen, was…