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A Year Later, the Eric Garner Grand Jury Decision Still Stings

Matt Taibbi Rolling Stone
Cops become instant media villains for decisions made in frenzied minutes or seconds. But the politicians and judges behind them spend months and years of calculation building walls to hide the same acts. Most of the time, they get away with it. Even in the most high-profile cases, justice is a marathon.

Charles Koch Gave $90 Million to Influence Higher Ed in the South

Alex Kotch Facing South
The proposed center at WCU is part of a long campaign by Koch to influence higher education. The Charles Koch Foundation along with three other groups led by Koch gave nearly $108 million to 366 colleges and universities from 2005 to 2014, finds an Institute for Southern Studies investigation, building on research by Greenpeace.

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Have We Hit Peak Inequality?

Chuck Collins Other Words
These 400 billionaires have greater wealth than 190 million of their fellow Americans put together.

Scans Prove There’s No Such Thing As a ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ Brain

Jessica Hamzelou New Scientist
The idea that people have either a “female” or “male” brain is an old one. To test the theory, scientists looked for differences in brain scans of 1400 people. They found that very few people had all of the brain features they might be expected to have, based on their sex. Averaged across many people, sex differences in brain structure do exist, but an individual brain is likely to be just that: individual, with a mix of features.

The Reign of Absurdiocy

Uri Avnery Gush Shalom
There is no such thing as "international terrorism". To declare war on "international terrorism" is nonsense. Politicians who do so are either fools or cynics, and probably both.

The Necessity of Football

JAMIL SMITH The New Republic
Too few of us recognize ourselves in the beauty and the carnage the NFL presents each Sunday. The game won’t change because we’re not changing. I hope a new audience will be exposed to Dr. Bennet Omalu’s story and understand that the only way to get football to change is to present its faults in an uncompromising fashion, pressuring the NFL and those who love the sport to face themselves and do better.