The Week: Most Recent News & Opinion:In-depth Briefing

India's fed-up middle class

The Week — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:11:00 -0500

Why is India's middle class angry?
It's no longer willing to put up with rampant government corruption. Throughout the summer, tens of thousands of Indians took part in a series of marches and mass protests, as part of what social anthropologist Shiv Viswanathan calls "a revolution of rising expectations" in the world's second most populous country. Corruption is nothing new in India, but several recent scandals have been particularly galling. It emerged last year that allies of the ruling Congress Party had wasted $40 billion by awarding telecom contracts to well-connected businessmen proffering...

Are Americans smarter than ever?

The Week — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:15:00 -0500

Are we really getting smarter?
We are, at least in terms of intelligence quotient, or IQ, which is the most broadly used measure of mental ability. Over the past hundred years or so, raw scores on IQ tests have improved steadily. The phenomenon is known as the Flynn effect, after political scientist James Flynn, who discovered it in the 1980s. According to his extensive research, IQ test scores in the U.S. increased by an average of three points per decade during the 20th century. IQs themselves have not risen, since the scoring of each new test version is calibrated to assure a mean score of 100...

The world's newest nation

The Week — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 14:13:00 -0500

Why did Sudan split?
As an artificial construction of British colonialism, Sudan was always an unwieldy country. The northern two thirds, mostly desert, are populated primarily by Muslim Arabs. The jungles and swampland of the southern third, which has now become South Sudan, are home to mostly Christian or animist blacks. The northern-dominated government in Khartoum exploited oil deposits in the south but discriminated against southerners and tried to impose Islamic law on them. Not surprisingly, the north and south fought each other almost continuously after Sudan became independent from Britain...

The case against antidepressants

The Week — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 11:33:00 -0500

How do antidepressants work?
No one knows for sure. The most commonly prescribed antidepressants in the U.S. alter levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin, which has been linked to feelings of well-being. These drugs, grouped together as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and marketed under such names as Prozac, Celexa, Zoloft, and Paxil, essentially keep serotonin in the brain’s synapses for an instant longer than usual; in theory, an increase in the level of serotonin is what makes people feel less depressed or anxious. About three quarters of people who take antidepressants...

Blades of glory: America's love affair with lawns

The Week — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:15:00 -0500

Why do we have lawns?
Whether we know it or not, we’re imitating European royalty. The first lawns were created by the nobles and aristocrats of 17th- and 18th-century Europe, including Louis XIV of France, whose Versailles gardens were the first to include squares of tapis vert, or “green carpet.” The idea of lawns as status symbols and “pleasure grounds” caught on among French and British landed gentry, who relied on servants, sheep, and goats as lawn mowers. After the American Revolution, the trend hopped the Atlantic and flourished among the new nation’s landed...

Black swans

The Week — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:28:00 -0500

Why call big surprises black swans?
It goes back to the 2nd-century Roman poet Juvenal, who said that some events are “as rare a bird as a black swan.” In reality, black swans aren’t so rare, but Europeans once believed there was no such thing because they had never seen one. Their certainty evaporated when early European explorers of Australia came upon swans whose feathers were black. The term has recently come into vogue thanks to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which became a surprise best seller after the 2008 financial...

Fighting over food

The Week — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:15:00 -0600

How bad is the problem?
Food prices are now at an all-time high, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Wheat cost twice as much in January as it did last June, pushing an additional 44 million people worldwide into poverty. Higher prices of staples, particularly wheat, helped drive the public anger in Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, where the average family spends 38 percent of its income on food (compared with 7 percent in the U.S.). “Some days we do not eat dinner,” said Cairo truck driver Ahmed Said, who went on strike for higher wages after President...

The anti-American

The Week — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:35:00 -0600

How popular is Chávez at home?
Hard economic times and repressive policies have worn at his appeal as the socialist liberator of the poor. The global recession of the past two years hit Venezuela particularly hard. The country relies on oil for 90 percent of its export earnings and nearly one third of its gross domestic product, so the effects are severe when demand and prices drop. With Chávez’s nationalization of oil companies chilling foreign and corporate investment, Venezuela’s economy has stagnated in recent years, and inflation has soared above 25 percent; a brutal...

Sudan's perpetual war

The Week — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 13:49:00 -0500

Why is Sudan so violent?
The roots of conflict run deep, nurtured by racial and religious hostility. In the early 20th century, Britain, which administered Sudan, sought to limit the influence of the Arab, Muslim north on the largely black, Christian and animist south—even restricting travel between the two regions. As Sudan prepared for its 1956 independence, a civil war broke out between north and south, in part because southerners feared domination by the north. Sudan’s civil war evolved into Africa’s longest, raging intermittently over the next half-century, at a cost of more...

Targeting teachers

The Week — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 12:50:00 -0500

Why the focus on teachers?
For decades, education reformers have worked to eliminate yawning achievement gaps between middle-income and poor children by increasing funding, reducing class size, or devising cutting-edge curriculums. But today most reformers have decided that quality teaching is the critical variable, and a controversial new documentary, Waiting for Superman, largely takes their side. Researchers have discovered that two teachers who instruct the same grade in the same school can produce widely divergent outcomes — regardless of the socioeconomic status of students. A recent...

The internet is spying on you

The Week — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:32:00 -0500

How frequently am I followed online?
Constantly. Your computer leaves a unique digital trail every time you visit a website, post a comment on a blog, or add a photo to your Facebook wall. A growing number of companies follow that trail to assemble a profile of you and your affinities. These profiles can contain shocking levels of detail—including your age, income, shopping habits, health problems, sexual proclivities, and ZIP code—right down to the number of rooms in your house and the number of people in your family. Although trackers don’t identify their subjects by name, the...

The future of the electric car

The Week — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:55:00 -0500

Are electric cars selling?
Yes, though to a very limited number of early adopters. Tesla Motors has sold more than 1,000 of its $109,000 Roadsters, and tiny startup Commuter Cars has moved about 10 of its odd-looking, $150,000 Tangos. The much cheaper Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf will hit select markets later this year, and tens of thousands of people have already put their names on waiting lists to reserve one. Mitsubishi and Ford plan to debut their electric cars next year, and several other automakers, from giants such as Ford and Toyota to indies such as Fisker and Coda, are scrambling...

Cleaning up the Tour de France

The Week — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:37:00 -0500

When did cyclists begin cheating?
Probably back in the first Tour de France, in 1903. Simply completing the grueling, 2,000-mile race through the Alps requires nearly superhuman levels of endurance, strength, and aerobic capacity; to win, riders must push their bodies beyond pain and exhaustion to their ultimate limits. So from the beginning, riders have resorted to painkillers, stimulants, and various performance enhancers to keep them pedaling through their agony. In the race’s earliest days, riders downed wine, brandy, whiskey, and Champagne to dull the ache of overworked muscles and help...

Death by stoning

The Week — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:20:00 -0500

What was Ashtiani’s crime?
Four years ago, the 43-year-old mother of two was charged in an Iranian court with killing her husband. She denied any wrongdoing and was cleared of murder at trial. But three out of the five male judges in the Islamic court decided that she was guilty of adultery—her alleged lover was also charged in the murder—and they sentenced her to death by stoning. After her lawyer blogged about the case last month, human-rights activists, celebrities such as Robert Redford, and politicians including Sen. John Kerry began campaigning for her release. In the wake...

Europe on the brink

The Week — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 10:00:00 -0500

Why is everyone so worried?
Across Europe, particularly in the southern euro zone, nations are saddled with enormous debts. They borrowed heavily in the boom years, and their deficits mushroomed during the past two years of economic turmoil. Now lenders are worried about whether they can pay their debts. Last fall, the Greek government revealed that its budget deficit was twice as large as the previous administration had admitted. Spain, which had a budget surplus in 2007, now has a deficit of $163 billion. These debts mean governments must borrow more on the international markets, normally a routine...

Babies for sale

The Week — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:57:00 -0500

How does international adoption work?
It’s governed by a patchwork of local, national, and international rules, which makes the system vulnerable to abuse and corruption. Working through an array of international and private agencies, U.S. families adopted 13,000 foreign-born children last year—more than the rest of the world combined. Many of these adoptions go smoothly, and result in thrilled new parents and in children whose futures are immeasurably brighter than they would have been otherwise. But international adoption can also be a legal no-man’s land, in which prospective...