Teddy Roosevelt once said “the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Recent research suggests he may have been more right than he knew: Life’s “best prize” might actually extend life itself. Our common perception is that retirement is a time when we can relax and take better care of ourselves after stressful careers. But what if work itself is beneficial to our health, as several recent studies suggest? One of them, by Jennifer Montez of Harvard Unive

Viewpoints June 12, 2013

In the fall of 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a sweeping package of patent reforms into law. He promised they would improve patent quality, reduce excessive litigation, encourage innovation and create jobs. Last week, the president unveiled another round of sweeping patent reforms. He promised they would improve patent quality, reduce excessive litigation, encourage innovation and … you get the idea. Obviously, the president’s first attempt didn’t work. His latest legislative proposals

Viewpoints June 12, 2013

People can run into two problems when they need to find a taxi. The first is that they don’t know whether a taxi will be available. The second is that they don’t know when a taxi will be available. Uber Technologies Inc., a San Francisco-based company, was set up to solve both problems. You can download its application, and it will find out where you are and come pick you up. It will also tell you when it is coming. In fact, the app comes with a screen that shows exactly where the vehicle is, so

Viewpoints June 12, 2013

The Syrian war is spreading fast, engulfing all of its neighbors and risking even larger conflicts, while leaving the pregnant question: What’s to be done before the region explodes?First the facts: Firefights across the Iraqi border have become quite common, and many analysts believe the Sunni-Shiite violence now engulfing Iraq exploded after Iraq’s Sunnis watched their brethren next door stand up to Assad, an Alawite-Shiite. Just after the latest wave of attacks that killed at least 24 people,

Viewpoints June 9, 2013

The “tea party” is back and is brewing trouble for the Republican establishment.After the GOP debacle in the 2012 election, when Republicans not only failed to win the presidency but blew a chance to take over the Senate, party leaders paused to consider what had gone wrong.The Republican National Committee issued a scathing report warning that the party was in “an ideological cul-de-sac” and resolved to act friendlier toward women, minorities and low-income voters. Strategist Karl Rove said the

Viewpoints June 9, 2013

PARIS ― To believe the media narrative, the “Arab Spring” has arrived in yet another Islamic nation ― Turkey this time ― snowballing at record speed from a single protest over the fate of trees under an urban-development plan. This simplistic explanation might have more merit if Turkey wasn’t the staging ground for Western interests in Syria.Spontaneous, organic protest movements have certain characteristics. They’re relatively small and easily contained. Without being fueled deliberately, they

Viewpoints June 7, 2013

Michael Douglas may have done more for awareness about human papillomavirus than all the education programs health advocates have ever sponsored. The actor revealed this week that his throat cancer was caused by an HPV infection, the result of his having oral sex with an HPV-infected woman. The HPV problem can certainly use the attention. A dozen or so variants of HPV, the most common sexually transmitted disease, cause cancer. For people who don’t have the virus, vaccines can prevent infection.

Viewpoints June 6, 2013

The government has unveiled a comprehensive job creation road map to attain President Park Geun-hye’s pledge to boost the nation’s employment rate from the present 64.2 percent to 70 percent by 2017.To achieve the goal, the road map calls for creating a total of 2.38 million jobs, or 476,000 per year during the next five years, a tall order given the economy’s limited job-creating capacity. The blueprint rests on three pillars: expanding part-time employment, fostering “creative” service busines

Editorial June 5, 2013

The forced repatriation of nine North Korean refugees from Laos has triggered loud calls for legislation aimed at improving human rights conditions in North Korea and providing support to people fleeing the pariah state.Many North Korea experts here assert that had there been such a law, the nine young North Koreans would not have been sent back to the North, where they are feared to face brutal punishment. They note that one underlying cause of the debacle was poor communication between the Kor

Editorial June 5, 2013

Protests against plans to replace an Istanbul park with a shopping mall have spread across Turkey, metastasizing into something far more politically significant. While the demonstrations aren’t the start of a Turkish Spring, they show why Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s design to turn his country into a presidential republic next year should be stopped. The police response to the Gezi Park protests has been brutal, injuring hundreds of people and turning central Istanbul into a battle zone

Viewpoints June 5, 2013