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(With apologies to Jonathan Swift .) In a hail of bullets, students at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida were thrust into the role of activists. Within hours, it became clear that they were to become the most determined, effective, and articulate public citizens we have seen in our country in a very long time. The fact that they were responding to a terror attack in our most politically benighted state made their achievements all the more remarkable. They drew attention to Senator Marco Rubio 's misplaced priorities more effectively than anybody of my generation has done, shaming him into endorsing a reduced limit on ammunition magazines. They caused the famously inflexible Gov. Rick "Skeletor" Scott to make a small concession on the question of whether someone too young to buy a Bud Light should be able to buy an assault rifle. The even convinced the president of the United States to speak out in favor of universal background checks, so that terrorist...

PRI journalist Jason Margolis reports that even with recently rising wages, the United States remains one of the world's most inequitable nations , by several measures. The report alludes to two prominent measures of income inequality -- the Gini coefficient and ratios of executive pay to that of average workers. By either measure, the United States is either in poor company or in no company at all. That is to say, a broad measure of income distribution puts the United States in the company of relatively underdeveloped countries -- certainly not any of the countries of Europe. And the stratospheric pay of CEOs compared to ordinary workers cannot be found anywhere in the world. As other studies have found, sharp inequalities are bad for public health. In countries with highly concentrated wealth, increased stress and other factors mean that even the wealthy are less healthy than they would be in more equitable societies. The problem in the United States, of course, is that "eq...

Library of Congress researcher Shameema Rahman discusses several failed efforts to count federal laws , and does not offer an estimate. Blogger Dave Kowal argues that there are "too many" and provides a rough estimate of 4,500 criminal violations , with thousands of additional laws throughout the U.S. Code. Neither writer estimates the number of state and municipal laws, but presumably they number in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Image: Puntifications In other words, many  things are illegal ( adj .) in our country -- literally more than we can count. And yet ... and yet! There is one very narrow category of legal violations that will cause the perpetrator to be known as an  illegal. As if the word were a noun. It is not rape, murder, jaywalking, tax evasion, burglary, arson, or treason. People who do these things are described by very specific nouns usually ending in -ist  or -er . But the perpetrators of these crimes are understood as distinct from the crimes thems...

Avery Island, Louisiana is very high on the list of places I have never been but to which I feel a strong connection. Since I started getting serious about chili in middle school, I have never been far from a bottle of Tabasco. One of the nice things about my three-year stint in the specialty food industry is that our packaging plant always had hundreds of thousands of tiny (1/8-ounce) bottles of the pepper-mash sauce, because we put one in every Meal, Ready-to-Eat that we packaged. When we had meetings in the office, it was often the case that every man in the room was wearing a Tabasco necktie, as we each had a small collection. I remember my boss there admonishing me when I returned from a meeting in New England and complained about the bland food. "What were you doing traveling up there without Tabasco in your pocket?" she scolded. Its Louisiana home has loomed large in my imagination for years. Even though my parents have visited -- and they did bring me some nice gifts ...

Graph: U.S. Energy Information Administration In recent years, I have noticed wind turbines in a lot of new locations, and it is not my imagination that generation of electricity by wind has been increasing rapidly. A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration confirms that wind is poised to overtake hydroelectric power this year, with each generating about 250,000 megawatts hours of electricity per day. The report provides some interesting insights into the geography of renewable energy generation ( note: some parts of the site label hydroelectric as separate from renewables, though geographers would consider it part of the renewables mix ). Month-to-month changes in each are a combination of differences in built capacity and potential that varies with climatic factors. Because hydroelectric construction has all but ceased in the U.S. (most optimal sites already being in use), fluctuations in this sector have to do with season and secular trends in rainfall, snowmel...

Congress has finally gotten around to doing something  about sexual harassment by its own members, but true accountability remains elusive. In an unusual act of decency, the usually unprincipled Speaker Paul Ryan named a commission to expose, among other things, the heretofore secretive practice of using public money to settle claims by victims. The work of the commission soon exposed one of its own members, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA). It is not clear whether he simply hoped that the commission would not be bright enough to discover his transgressions, or whether he volunteered for the post in an effort to keep covering his tracks. I first noticed the story because of Adam Peck's reporting on Meehan's convoluted rationalization, which included blaming President Obama's healthcare legislation . One phrase in Peck's report piqued my geographic interest, though. I decided I needed to learn more about his "heavily gerrymandered district to the west of Philadelphia....

I sometimes hear it suggested that musicians and other artists should keep politics out of their work and "just" perform. More than once I have heard this from fans who have somehow heard their favorite musicians for years without ever listening to them. Music does not have  to be about something, but quite often it is -- and quite often it makes a difference. Billy Bragg ( LA Review of Books ) To start the new year, Boston radio journalist Christopher Lydon decided to reprise a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion he had had in 2017 with British troubadour Billy Bragg. Those familiar with Lydon's earlier program The Connection  will be pleasantly surprised to hear that he now knows how to interview with a few deft questions. The result is Billy Bragg's Guide to the Music of Dissent  -- a relaxed conversation about the relationship between music and social change, from the blues to punk to anti-fascism. In addition to uncovering a lot of interesting connections amo...