by Maryann O. Keating, Ph.D. Without identifying the cause, we know when we are ill and hurting. Obviously, it is not advisable to experiment with a variety of remedies to determine which one works. Similarly, in economics, we know that an unemployment rate exceeding eight percent is too high. And even though the situation is desperate for those unemployed, randomly selected policy initiatives are not a solution. The unemployment rate may be parsed into various…

by PHIL TROYER, J.D. Many years ago, I traveled to Las Vegas to attend a wedding. While there, I struck up a conversation with a young man who worked at the hotel in which we were staying. “Do you gamble much?” I asked. “No,” he replied. “I used to, but then I looked around at all of these palatial casinos and realized they could not have been built without suckers like me thinking we could…

As an old editor I concede that you can be too picayunish about words. It no longer makes any difference whether you write auto or motorcar, to pick an example from my vintage stylebook. But some words (liberty, God, Jerusalem, heroism, compassion) matter to some more than others. When they lose their meaning, people lose parts of themselves. Dr. James Boyd White, a University of Michigan law professor and literary critic, addressed this concern in a series of essays…

For release Aug. 29 and thereafter (660 words) by Andrea Neal Don’t blame Mitt Romney and Barack Obama for the ugly tone of the 2012 presidential race. Blame John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. They started it. The Election of 1800 was the first time candidates campaigned on partisan platforms, and it’s been that way ever since. To paint the current atmosphere as especially poisonous, as a Washington Post writer called it, or as the worst…

We all know there’s been a shift in political posture from vision to reality. Hard times do that. The question, though, is whether your councilman or legislator will make the turn. Most sitting Hoosier politicians, Republican or Democrat, were elected on “the vision thing,” as George H. Bush once called it. Now they’re trying mightily to learn this new “reality thing.” The transformation can be awkward. For example, legislators are being urged to consider a…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. Ball State University (full disclosure: my employer) is seeking to acquire property adjacent to campus in order to build facilities that will  “house 50 dorm rooms, 100 hotel rooms, a series of conference rooms, a student-run retail area and two restaurants.” The expected cost of the project is around $25 million. There is one parcel of property in the plan Ball State does not yet own: a copy shop owned by…

by MARYANN O. KEATING, PH.D. There is no such thing as a perfect price index. Perfection in price indices requires that the prices of all products increase by the same percentage and that product quality plus the relative amounts of each product category remain constant.  Nevertheless, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is used to adjust retail sales, wages, and gross domestic product for inflation. Inflation is a yearly…

For immediate release (563 words) by JOHN KESSLER, M.A. The London Olympics was a showcase of talent and human ability by athletes from all over the world. The games, though, were not without some scandalous behavior. The badminton teams from China, Indonesia and South Korea were disqualified for trying to throw their match, and in men’s basketball the Spanish team was accused of trying to lose on purpose against Brazil. Olympic competition is supposed to…