The first step for parents to help their children navigate the dark side of modern college life is to become better informed. The second step is to show unqualified compassion and empathy. The third step is to help guide our children onto a path toward healing and recovery. Together these steps can build emotional connection and offer buoyancy to young lives otherwise at significant risk of being lost at sea.
The world is a complicated place. Even if we limit our attention to the world's countries---and in so doing, ignore other vital actors like non-governmental organizations, firms, political parties, and many others---we have nearly 200 entities to study. As it happens, those entities care about a lot of things: resources, policies, regimes, and so on. …
Continue reading "Understanding the Changing World: International Relations"
Despite the limitations of Brand USA as a policy and public/private partnership the American brand endures. A strong brand elicits strong feelings. Given its visibility and superpower status, I would argue that the United States, not Apple, is the world’s most valuable brand. The future value of the brand rests in the behavior of citizens, policymakers and how these behaviors are perceived by the rest of the world. A quasi-governmental organization pushing social media blasts to potential international visitors can do little to change these perceptions.
Those who study aging have known for decades that the effects of population aging are most visible in the growing proportion of the population requiring everyday care and assistance, usually by family members. If we aspire to be a society that values families, we need to do a better job supporting the needs of caregivers, particularly those who are the most vulnerable.
Minimum wage plans that consider local economic conditions are better than those that don’t, but they still make it difficult for the lowest-skilled workers to find jobs. We also shouldn’t be so quick to adjust federal policies just because some places are expensive, since being expensive is a signal that an area has desirable qualities people value.
The Florida Building Resilience Against Climate Effects Program (BRACE), hosted at FSU, works with health departments to adapt to extreme weather. Public health departments are on the front lines of responding to climate threats like extreme heat, hurricanes, and Zika virus.
In general, there’s no evidence that cities need sports teams to thrive—especially sports teams that are struggling. If Rays ownership wants a new stadium then it should be up to them to find a way to pay for it. Tampa officials and residents, along with taxpayers in surrounding Hillsborough County, should resist the Rays overtures.
Lack of resources or political support for sustainability are obstacles to integrating energy with environmental economic and social sustainability, but political and bureaucratic institutions that fragment authority are often the greatest barriers to more effective sustainability.
As with automobiles, and unlike with airline traffic, NASA’s proposed system would allow drones to fly where their owners wanted, when they wanted, without requiring permission from a government controller. But this same system could also be used for airline traffic, converting the current antiquated system of top-down air traffic control into a decentralized system in which aircraft electronically see and avoid each other. The technology for aircraft to see each other electronically already exists, and is already required for airliners.
One of the most satisfying parts of the assignment was that I challenged the students to write both a government and a defense memo that were so balanced in their arguments that I could not tell which side they personally favored. Virtually all of the students succeeded in doing so.
