Commentary
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Educating The Future, Not Reinventing the Wheel
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Chicago’s Preschool for All initiative, a universal preschool program that promises access to full-day preschool in community centers and Chicago Public Schools for all Chicago 4-year-olds, is currently in its first year of fully-fledged implementation. The promise of access to universal preschool in Chicago is on the verge of being…
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CBAM: Climate Change Savior or Protectionist Ploy?
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While the EU carbon price recently broke the symbolic threshold of 100 euros per ton, China’s carbon market has been hovering at around seven euros per ton. This huge discrepancy creates an advantage for non-EU exporters as they don’t need to bear the high price for carbon emissions. The price…
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Cory Doctorow on Why Interoperability Would Boost Digital Competition
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Cory Doctorow is an activist and science fiction writer. He was the co-editor of the blog Boing Boing and has served in various roles at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil rights group. He holds an honorary doctorate in Computer Science from the Open University (UK) where he is…
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Maintaining the Future of Public Infrastructure
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Hours before President Biden visited Pittsburgh in January 2022 to speak on infrastructure reform, one of the city’s major bridges collapsed—sending a bus and several cars down in the wreckage. The collapse injured at least ten people that morning, but Pittsburgh got lucky that day—15,000 cars typically drove across the…
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Climate Transition in the Context of Biodiversity Conservation
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The United Nations (UN) held two flagship conferences of the parties (COP) at the end of 2022 to discuss a wide range of environment-related issues. The UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) engaged stakeholders from different areas in government, academia, NGOs, the private sector, and Indigenous communities to combat biodiversity degradation. The…
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America Needs More Immigrants
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Americans have both celebrated and denounced immigration since the country’s founding. George Washington wrote in 1788: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” In contrast, Benjamin Franklin wrote of…
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Sitting on a Ticking Bomb: Introducing Congressional Oversight for Zero-Day Vulnerabilities
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Each new military paradigm and technological development promises new legal and policy questions. Every innovation in weaponry brings new range, cost, and training while impacting civilian life, posing new questions to the leaders of the day. The Constitution attempts to timelessly outline the parameters around which the government make war,…
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Electric Vehicles Are Not the Solution. Sustainable Transit Is.
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In the past two years, the Biden Administration has enacted major policies to increase the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates $7.5 billion to develop and improve domestic EV charging infrastructure and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) updates existing EV subsidies and…
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We Live in an Era of Ritual Child Sacrifice
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Isabeau Dasho is the Assistant director of the Harris Writing Workshop and new mom. Co-authored by Megan Sanders. Recently I attended the “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery” exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum. It was deft, approachable, and well handled. The curators took care with the horrific and scary bits, respectfully…
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Has technological innovation lost the plot? An interview with AI ethicist Dr. Shannon Vallor
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Shannon Vallor is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) at the University of Edinburgh, where she is also appointed in Philosophy. Professor Vallor’s research explores how new technologies, especially AI, robotics, and data science, reshape human moral character,…
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New Green Investing: Safe Harbor for Financial Services and Cannabis
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As each subsequent state legalizes marijuana for recreational and medical use, its inclusion in the already ineffective drug war becomes increasingly redundant. The American public agrees, with about 88% of respondents favoring some form of legalization, and 59% favoring access for recreational purposes. Individual states have led the way toward…