Portside

I turned off onto a long dirt road about 15 miles outside of Montevideo, Uruguay and drove towards a wooden guard shack that stood across from a small farmhouse hidden by a long row of trees. Usually, if you want to meet a country’s president – or even ex-president – you have to fight through layers of bureaucracy, confirm that you are not a threat and have a very good rationale for being considered worthy to talk to.

While our economy is rebounding from the Great Recession, hardworking Americans are being left behind. Our economic and political system has lost sight of what matters most: We the People.

Here's a unique piece on twenty-first century American war -- and war-gaming. This is a new-style “war game” that Tom calls “Do-Over” and that anyone, 12 to 75, can play in their home or workplace based on the latest war headlines. Consider this a different way of looking at and taking in the global war on terror (and other American conflicts) in these years. Check it out and then play a round of Do-Over yourself!

CSPG's Poster of the Week honors Internatio­­­­­nal Women's Day by commemorating Berta Cáceres, a well-known indigenous environmental leader in Honduras who was assassinated in her home recently.

Brilliant, tedious and irredeemably evil, Leni Riefenstahl’s "Triumph of the Will" (1935) is one of the great conundrums of cinema history. Now released on DVD.

California Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez introduced a bill to allow groups of 10 or more independent contractors working for "hosting platforms" such as Uber to join worker organizations and bargain over pay and working conditions. This would allow workers to have union-like associations, but they would still be considered contractors and not employees.

Some grated Parmesan suppliers have been mislabeling products by filling them with too much cellulose, a common anti-clumping agent made from wood pulp.

Over the years, Woodward’s beating receded behind more publicized stories like the lynching of Emmett Till. But with police brutality remaining a problem in many African-American communities today, it’s appropriate to highlight an important – and unappreciated – story of the civil rights movement.

How many statisticians does it take to ensure at least a 50 percent chance of a disagreement about p-values?

This isn’t simply about a short-term budget fight. This is about whether we have a president and an electorate united in moving forward a sane economic platform that will strengthen the American economy in the uncertain years ahead, or if we will allow the ideologues and big-money interests to succeed in taking the wheels of the American economy and driving us all off a cliff.