‘Telling time is a complicated business’
Nishant Sahdev at The Wall Street Journal
Modern economies “depend on everyone not only knowing the correct time but agreeing to it,” says Nishant Sahdev. About 450 atomic clocks are “continuously compared and averaged into a single international standard known as Coordinated Universal Time,” a “surprisingly thin thread on which much of the global economy depends.” A “difference of a fraction of a second can cause a breakdown,” and the “private sector could move faster by treating precise time as an essential service that needs protection.”
‘“Dignity” is a poor excuse for blocking press access to state executions’
Austin Sarat at The Hill
Indiana law “says that the press has no right to be present when the state carries out executions,” and the state “defends its limitations on access to executions by advancing the dignity argument,” says Austin Sarat. But there is “something odd about using the word ‘dignity’ to describe what happens when the state kills one of its citizens, and about allowing the state that seeks to do that deed to speak for a condemned person.”
‘The Founding Father you’ve probably never heard of’
Abdallah Fayyad at The Boston Globe
Americans “all know the broad strokes of the story of America’s founding,” says Abdallah Fayyad. But “despite the well-documented record of the American Revolution, one of the Founders — arguably one of the most influential — has been almost lost to history.” James Wilson “was a Scottish immigrant” who “quickly became one of the most learned and successful men of his time, advocating for radical ideas about democracy and political equality,” and he “helped shape America’s founding principles.”
‘S.F.’s recovery is missing one of the hardest things to bring back’
Allison Arieff at the San Francisco Chronicle
Everyone “thinks that San Francisco was perfect the day they arrived,” but many “can’t help but be nostalgic for a time when the arts felt core to the identity of the city,” says Allison Arieff. San Francisco “may be flush with private capital, but the culture of tech is largely one of metrics and results; few in this community seem inclined to support something with a hard-to-measure return on investment,” and “federal funding has, of course, all but dried up.”
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