Liz Fong-Jones joined car sharing program Relay Rides because her car was sitting parked most of the time. An environmentally-minded M.I.T student and one-time Google employee, she saw that by renting it out, she could maximize the car’s use and potentially lessen the number of cars on the road. What she didn’t see was that she was about to become the subject of a debate about insurance and liability in the sharing economy. The man who rented Fong-Jones’s car was found at fault in an accident in which he was killed and four people in the other car were seriously injured. Insurance claims may exceed Relay Rides’ million-dollar policy.

Commercial use of a personal vehicle is generally not covered by basic auto insurance, and in most places companies reserve the right to cancel or non READ FULL POST DISCUSS

An investigative arm of the Pentagon has termed Wikileaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, currently holed up and claiming asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for fear he will be deported to Sweden and thence to the US, and his organization, both “enemies” of the United States.

The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia is reporting that documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act from the Pentagon disclose that an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a counter-intelligence unit, of a military cyber systems analyst based in Britain who had reportedly expressed support for Wikileaks and had attended a demonstration in support of Assange, refers to the analyst as having been “communicating with the enemy, D-104.” The D-104 classification refers to an article of the US Uniform Military Code of Military Justice which prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy.”

This is pretty dangerous language, referring to an Australian citizen who many consider to be no more than a working journalist who has been receiving information leaked by whistleblowers and disseminating that information to the public. As David Cole, a civil liberties attorney in the US associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, notes, “The US military is not at war with Wikileaks or with Julian Assange.”

Certainly if a member of the US military were to go to a news organization like the New York Times -- or the Melbourne Age for that matter -- and leak some kind of damaging secret information exposing US military war crimes, it is hard to believe that the military would call that “communicating with the enemy” (though reportedly the Bush/Cheney administration considered, but then dropped the idea of bringing espionage ...

We label as “crazy” those members of the human species whose behavior we find hard to understand, but the cascading crises in contemporary political, economic, and cultural life make a bigger question increasingly hard to ignore: Is the species itself crazy? Has the process of evolution in the hominid line produced a species that is both very clever and very crazy?

Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall ends his recent book about the Masters of the Planet with such reflection:

[A]part from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences. Our brains are extraordinary mechanisms, and they have allowed us to accomplish truly amazing things; but we are still only good at anticipating -- or at least of paying attention to -- highly immediate consequences. We are notably bad at assessing risk, especially long-term risk. We believe crazy things, such as that human sacrifice will propitiate the gods, or that people are kidnapped by space aliens, or that endless economic expansion is possible in a finite world, or that if we just ignore climate change we won’t have to face its consequences. Or at the very least, we act as if we do (p. 227).

We humans routinely believe crazy things, but are we a crazy species? Does the big brain that allowed us to master the planet have a basic design flaw? Given the depth of the social and ecological crises we face -- or, in some cases, refuse to face -- should we be worried about whether we can slip out of the traps we have created?

Reading Tattersall along with recent books by two thoughtful analysts on resource depletion and ecological degradation, those answers seem quite obvious: yes, on all counts. We’re in more trouble than we want to believe, and we are not as well equipped to deal with our troubles as we imagine. But I find some consolation in thinking about our current troubles in ...

Back from three weeks off grid, much of it hiking in Alaska and Australia.

When I left the U.S. economy was in a stall, Greece was on the brink of defaulting, the euro-zone couldn’t get its act together, the Fed couldn’t decide on another round of quantitative easing, congressional Democrats and Republicans were in gridlock, much of the nation was broiling, and neither Obama nor Romney had put forward a bold proposal for boosting the economy, slowing climate change, or much of anything else. 

What a difference three weeks makes. 

Here’s a bold proposal I offer free of charge to Obama or Romney: Every American should get a mandatory minimum of three weeks paid vacation a year.

Most Americans only get two weeks off right now. But many don’t even take the full two weeks out of fear of losing their jobs. One in four gets no paid vacation at all, not even holidays. Overall, Americans have less vacation time than workers in any other advanced economy.

This is absurd. A mandatory three weeks off would be good for everyone — including employers.

Studies show workers who take time off are more productive after their batteries are recharged. They have higher morale, and are less likely to mentally check out on the job.

This means more output per worker — enough to compensate employers for the cost of hiring additional workers to cover for everyone’s three weeks’ vacation time.

It’s also a win for the economy, because these additional workers would bring down the level of unemployment and put more money into more people’s pockets. This extra purchasing power would boost the economy overall.

More and longer vacations would also improve our health. A study by Wisconsin’s Marshfield Clinic shows women who take regular vacations experience less tension and depression year round. Studies also show that men who take regular ...

What a blessing it is for Mitt Romney to serve as the Republican nominee for president.

He's a living portrait of Mr. Wall Street Man. As his candidacy unfolds, it's allowing us commoners to get a peek into how the privileged few rig the rules for their own gain — at our expense.

Romney is, of course, a full-fledged initiate in the Uppermost One-Tenth-of-1-Percenters Club. He's got at least a quarter-billion dollars stashed away.

It's not Mitt's wealth, however, that's troubling. We've had many rich politicians who've become admirable servants of the common good. Rather, it's how he got it — and where he put it.

The "how" has now been well documented: Romney's corporate takeover outfit, Bain Capital, practiced the hocus-pocus of legalized Wall Street robbery known as private equity deals. Bain continues to put millions in Mitt's pocket, even as it has bankrupted companies, cut thousands of jobs, and slashed workers' pay.

But where did he put his booty? We don't know about all of it, for Romney keeps playing hide-and-seek with his fortune, refusing to release his tax returns or fully report his holdings on legally required disclosure forms. Good investigative reporters, however, are now digging out some rich nuggets, such as the secret $3-million Swiss bank account he has used to bet against the U.S. dollar. That's legal, I guess, but not nice.

Also uncovered is his tax shelter in the Cayman Islands, where he uses a tricky dodge called a "blocker corporation" to shield his IRA investments from business taxes — and from public scrutiny. Other assets turn out to be hidden in offshore accounts and tax havens in Australia, Bermuda, Luxembourg, and ...

When I wrote the cover article of the July/August issue of The Atlantic, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” I expected a hostile reaction from many American career women of my generation and older, and positive reactions from women aged roughly 25-35. I expected that many men of that younger generation would also have strong reactions, given how many of them are trying to figure out how to be with their children, support their wives’ careers, and pursue their own plans.

I also expected to hear from business representatives about whether my proposed solutions – greater workplace flexibility, ending the culture of face-time and “time machismo,” and allowing parents who have been out of the workforce or working part-time to compete equally for top jobs once they re-enter – were feasible or utopian.

What I did not expect was the speed and scale of the reaction – almost a million readers within a week and far too many written responses and TV, radio, and blog debates for me to follow – and its global scope. I have conducted interviews with journalists in Britain, Germany, Norway, India, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, and Brazil; and articles about the piece have been published in France, Ireland, Italy, Bolivia, Jamaica, Vietnam, Israel, Lebanon, Canada, and many other countries.

Reactions differ across countries, of course. Indeed, in many ways, the article is a litmus test of where individual countries are in their own evolution toward full equality for men and women. India and Britain, for example, have had strong women prime ministers in Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, but now must grapple with the ...

In a rant described by one scientist as "either incredibly ignorant" or "intentionally misleading," Fox News host Greg Gutfeld denied deforestation and distorted climate science.