Must Read

• Harold Meyerson, The Democrats in Opposition
• FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality

Should Read

• Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, Why Are We Arguing About Measles Vaccines In 2015?
• Julie McKay Turner, Anatomy of a Solution: A Final Update to Bedford’s Salt Shed Saga
• Paul Krugman (NYT), Debt:  A Thought Experiment
• Cathy O’Neil, Working with Larry Summers (Part 2)

Work

• Tekla Perry, Massive Worldwide Layoff Under Way At IBM
• Beryl Lieff Benderly, Another funny thing happened on the way to the STEM shortage
• Jordan Weissmann, The Myth of America’s Tech-Talent Shortage
• Robert Charette, The STEM Crisis Is a Myth
• Tom Jacobs, Americans Overestimate Class Mobility

Education

• National Center for Education Statistics, Tuition Costs of Colleges and Universities
• Mike Konczal, The [University of North Carolina] Coup and the Second Limit of Economic Liberalism
• Cathy O’Neil, Let’s make paying for college harder

Politics

• Charlie Pierce, I Dream Of Commonwealth: The Things We Do For Ourselves
• Matthew Yglesias, These are the winners and losers in Obama’s budget proposal
• Thomas Edsall (NYT), The Problem With Middle-Class Populism  [Ed.:  I think this is a pretty lame article but it’s worth reading as an example of half-assed analysis.]
• Amy Chozick (NYT), Economic Plan Is a Quandary for Hillary Clinton’s Campaign
• The Daily Show, Amender’s Game & Southern Slam [Ed.:  Start watching at the 4:30 mark.  Damn.]
• A Member of Congress, Confessions of a congressman

Economics

• Brad DeLong, What Failed in 2008?
• Brad DeLong, Confessions of a Financial Deregulator
• Michael McAuliff, Paul Ryan’s First Tax Legislation Adds Nearly $100 Billion To Deficit [Ed.:  And not in a constructive way, e.g., investments in infrastructure which would eventually pay for themselves]
• Helene Cooper (NYT), Obama’s Defense Budget Aims Higher, and at Overseas Conflicts
• Ezra Klein, Obamacare is costing way less than expected  [Ed.:  Yes, and that’s a good thing, but we’re still spending about twice as much on health care in the U.S. as they do in countries with similar life expectancies, mortality rates, etc.]

Foreign Affairs

• Joschka Fisher, A Greek Burial for German Austerity
• Charles Wyplosz, Why Russia’s Economy Will Not Collapse

Environment

• Harvard SEAS, Boston’s natural gas infrastructure releases high levels of heat-trapping methane [Ed.:  Note the high degree of correlation between leak rate and population density –

Taking the maps together, I infer that natural gas is a popular choice for home heating in New England.]

Science

• scikit-image, Image processing in Python

Brian Williams

• Frank Conniff, “Let’s not allow Brian Williams’ lies about being in Iraq diminish the fine work he did telling us the lies that got us there.”
• “God”, “Brian Williams embellishes one story = firestorm. Fox News lies unapologetically for 20 straight years = #1 cable news network. Wtf…”

Miscellany

• Patricia Cohen (NYT), When Company Is Fined, Taxpayers Often Share Bill
• Ashley Southall and Tamar Lewin (NYT), New Harvard Policy Bans Teacher-Student Relations
• BBC One, The Great British Bake Off, Series 5, European Cakes