It looks like China’s decadesold policy of limiting births is finally going to bite the dust. As Bloomberg News reports from Beijing:　 China is planning to scrap all limits on the number of children a family can have, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be a historic end to a policy that spurred countless human-rights abuses and left the world’s second-largest economy short of workers.　It would in fact be a historic move. Will it have much of an impact on China’s birth ra

May 24, 2018

There has been a great deal of discussion of social division and polarization in recent times, but those terms are inadequate. What besets the United States is much worse.　Both the right and the left are increasingly defined by a form of Manichaeism, in which the forces of light are taken to be in a death struggle with the forces of darkness. We are in a Manichaean moment.　Manichaeism was a religion founded in the third century by the prophet Mani, born in what is now Iraq. Seeking to synthesize

May 24, 2018

In the bizarre double helix that is the Russia investigation, one of the recurring themes is the role of would-be influencers. They start off as connectors and facilitators, but gradually (and implausibly) they move to the center of the story. That’s true with Stefan Halper, the retired American professor at Britain’s Cambridge University who has become the object of President Trump’s counter-witch hunt to expose a supposed FBI mole who infiltrated his campaign. The FBI is guarding Halper’s iden

May 24, 2018

Legalizing marijuana makes sense for a lot of reasons, but there’s one valuable thing we’ll lose when police stop arresting people for smoking pot: A sense of just how misleading our crime data are.　Data on arrests and reported crime play a big role in public policy and law enforcement. Politicians employ them to gauge their success in making neighborhoods and the entire country safe. Police departments use them to determine where to deploy more officers to look for more crime. They are fed into

May 23, 2018

Counting calories is now the law of the land. This month, a long-delayed regulation came into effect requiring all food chains with 20 or more locations to list calorie information on their menus. Nutritionists fought to include the rule in the Affordable Care Act as a means of fighting obesity. But it turns out the regulation is based on weak science.Until now, only a handful of cities mandated calorie counts in restaurants. In New York City, which pioneered the policy in 2008, menu labeling ha

May 23, 2018

The notion of a Nobel Peace Prize for President Donald Trump is a peculiar one, but only the most petty, hyperpartisan soul could wish for him to fail at the meeting currently scheduled for June 12 in Singapore. A lot is at stake.　Events are moving quickly, but at this writing both the meeting itself and its chances for a successful outcome appear to be in jeopardy. The seemingly good-willed rapprochement that began with North Korea’s attendance at the recent Winter Olympics has largely evaporat

May 23, 2018

Oil has touched a level above $80 a barrel for the first time since November 2014. OPEC’s inventory target for output cuts has been met.　But even though its oil companies want to turn on the taps and its finance ministry may be worried about prices rising too far, Russia won’t bring its output deal with the group to a juddering halt when the participants meet in Vienna next month. Instead, it will stand alongside its Saudi partner and continue to toe the line on production restraint.　Its partici

May 22, 2018

In Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Timothy Morton observes that, “You can no longer have a routine conversation about the weather with a stranger. The presence of global warming looms into the conversation like a shadow, introducing strange gaps.” These days in Seoul, South Korea, you can no longer have routine conversations on the street about the weather due to the simple fact that your and your interlocutor’s faces are probably both covered in air pollution ma

May 22, 2018

Eighty-five percent of adults in the US who do not play a musical instrument wish they had learned to play one, according to a 2009 Gallup Poll; 69 percent would like to play one now. Nearly all believe musical skills can be learned at any age. Yet a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts survey found that just 12 percent of US adults were playing musical instruments.　This gap between aspiration and actuality occurs despite research that shows that making music, as a pro or amateur, is good for th

May 22, 2018

Last week the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an issue that seems to be nearing a tipping point in terms of public acceptance: sports betting. But will it be enough to overcome staunch opposition from those who stand to lose the most? Time will tell.　Back in 2011, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to their state constitution to allow sports betting in the Garden State and the following year, then-Gov. Chris Christie signed a law permitting the practice. In doing so, he chall

May 21, 2018

I have long defended freedom of speech for all, even those expressing the most appalling views. Yet I applauded when a United Nations court sentenced Vojislav Seselj, a Serbian politician, to ten years in prison for inciting war crimes with a nationalist speech in the former Yugoslavia during the early 1990s.Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. That is why, when I was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1977, I defended that right for a group calling themse

May 21, 2018

Hang out in any Silicon Valley cafe and the word “disruption” is sure to be uttered at a nearby table. It is the keyword to unlock funding for forward-leaning ideas and the approach toward cutting out the middle man in transactions, leaving behind the inefficiencies in mediation, and burying the slow-to-change and inertia-bound in industry. Disruption is everything and everyone wants a piece of it. Including the American people.　Disruption has hit every industry, from car transportation services

May 21, 2018