My Big Fat Obnoxious Prank
The Lawless and Ever Expanding World of Hidden-Camera TV
By Joy Press, The Village Voice
You're infuriated by a crazy cab driver who circles your destination over and over again while asking you belligerently offensive questions. It might be an everyday altercation -- and then again, you might have become the fall guy of a hidden-camera reality show on TV. As Joy Press writes, privacy is an expensive commodity in the post-September 11 world. Big Brother lurks around every corner -- for surveillance, entertainment, or both. -- Jacob Wheeler
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0407/tv.php

Patrolling Professors' Politics
By Sara Hebel, Chronicle of Higher Education
David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, is leading a national campaign for an 'Academic Bill of Rights,' enumerating principles for colleges to promote 'intellectual diversity' on campuses. The bill comes as a response of conservative students and educators who feel there's a liberal bias in the classroom. -- Kyle Cohen
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i23/23a01801.htm

Living With the Legacy of 'Racial Hygiene' in Michigan
By Daniel Sturm, Lansing City Pulse
Sturm exposes Michigan's nasty history of eugenics, the science of picking and choosing human genetic traits to produce 'a new and improved race of men.' Beginning in the 1920s, the eugenics movement ultimately led to the sterilization of over 67,000 'feeble-minded' or otherwise sub-standard Americans, and Michigan is the last state that hasn't offered a public apology. -- Andi McDaniel
http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/040114/040114cover.html

The Global Ideas Bank
Sure, we're all glad for sliced bread and the wheel and the internet, but who says inventions have to be primarily technological? Since 1985, the UK-based Institute for Social Inventions has been collecting ideas aimed at solving social problems. Anyone can submit ideas and they're all catalogued at the Institute's website, globalideasbank.org. Some of the best recent ideas include the Phoenix Commotion project, which builds houses from waste and recycled material and Streetwise, an opera company which aims to involve homeless people. -- Eric Larson
http://www.globalideasbank.org/