Apart from certain quarters on the Right predicting a Romney victory on Election Day, the final weeks of the campaign witnessed a gathering sentiment, almost a last-minute conventional wisdom, about the election’s outcome. It went something like this: Obama had a significant and reliable lead until the first debate. Pre-debate, Republicans lamented a lackluster Romney … Continue reading »
Hurricane Katrina
Two hurricanes and two networks
Hurricane Sandy hit close to home. Not where I live, mind you; but where my heart is, with my family. As the hours went by, I waited for updates from my brothers, my nephews, all in the path of the storm. My many friends and family members living in New Jersey or New York City … Continue reading »
Redeeming FEMA: How the agency has been strengthened since Katrina
Today’s FEMA is a lot different from the organization that flubbed the Katrina response. There have been a number of positive changes, mostly during the past four years. First, as the Washington Post explains, FEMA’s authority has expanded: Congress has broadened FEMA’s authority so that the agency can respond in advance of major storms, instead … Continue reading »
Risk assessment post-Fukushima: Going beyond the ‘design-basis event’
A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: [The regulation[ … Continue reading »
Drawing from experience
Many years of studying intergroup conflict have taught me this: the world is like a coloring book, and culture our crayons. You see, the world provides us with only an outline, a suggestion, of what the boundaries of our experience should be. We fill in these outlines with our own interpretations, value systems, and behavior … Continue reading »