Time Magazine pieces - by Lev Grossman, Mark Thompson & Austin Ramzy

Time Magazine has had some really interesting pieces from the last few months to note here... and which are available online to anyone with a username and password on the Time site.

The one that stood out the most was the Feb 11 issue cover story "Drone Home" by Lev Grossman. Really a fascinating piece about aerial drones, with the most well-known being the Predator Drone used by the U.S. military, but there now being a host of civilian-use drones here in America. Additionally, the same military use drone technology used by the U.S. could be adopted by any number of other countries and Grossman raises the compelling and plausible idea of a foreign power someday following the U.S. military path of using drones to strike at enemies, but doing so on U.S. soil.

The oldest Time piece to mention here was also by Grossman, but from the Dec 19 Person of the Year edittion of Time. "Runner-Up: Tim Cook, the Technologist" was on the Apple CEO and while the entire piece an interesting one, what stood out to me was mention of the hours put into his job. Remarkable anecdote from Grossman on Cook with "He wakes up at 3:45 every morning (“Yes, every morning”), does e-mail for an hour, stealing a march on those lazy East Coasters three time zones ahead of him, then goes to the gym, then Starbucks (for more e-mail), then work."

The other two recent pieces of note from Time were both well written, but actually stood out to me as reminders of past articles I've linked to and written on about similar topics. In the Feb 7 Time issue Mark Thompson wrote "Killer. Healer. Victim." on the shooting death of former Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle (who wrote a bestselling autobiography covering his time in the military). Kyle was active in trying to help other veterans cope with leaving the military and was gunned down at a shooting range by a someone someone struggling with mental illness and returning home. Really a sad story that reminded me of a 2012 blog post I did which linked to a number of pieces by Thompson and fellow Time writer Nancy Gibbs about veteran mental health troubles and disconnect with society.

The final Time story to mention here was by Austin Ramzy from the Feb 18 issue. "Precious Holdings" is about mining for Rare Earth metals and what's occurred in the market since the Chinese government in 2010 decided to dramatically limit exports of the commodities needed for technology including weapons, electronics and vehicles. Interesting piece that brought to mind a 2011 blog post I did on a Businessweek feature about Rare Earth mining in Alaska.

Time Magazine Cover Story on Military Suicides

Very profound cover story in the latest issue of Time Magazine that brought to mind other pieces from Time on the same subject.



The recent feature by Nancy Gibbs & Mark Thompson was titled "The War On Suicide?" and details the epidemic of suicides among current and former U.S. military personnel. The authors cite current statistics of one active duty suicide a day and one every 80 minutes among all veterans, but go beyond the horrifying numbers to detail the personal stories of several recent suicides by active duty servicemen. Just painful reading the depiction from a surviving spouse of mental health help that was sought in vain within the military.

Along these lines, the piece very much brought to mind some past Time features I've noted and linked to by the same writers. Mark Thompson penned in April 2009 "Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?" and in December of the same year I did this blog post on the Nancy Gibbs Time cover story "Terrified or Terrorist?" about Fort Hood shooter Nadal Hasan. Both works very much shared with the recent cover story a commonality of showing an active duty military culture of pushing forward and not showing weakness or a need for help.

On the same subject, but with actually a positive take-away was the December 2010 piece "Bringing Dogs to Heal: Care for Veterans with PTSD" by Mark Thompson and then in November 2011, I wrote a blog post featuring another Thompson Time cover story "The Other 1%" about the all too frequent disconnect between non military personnel and those who serve or have served.

It's an extremely difficult problem with no easy solution, but Gibbs and Thompson have done excellent work shedding light on the situation and need for greater efforts by the military at helping it's own.

Time Magazine - Troops Coming Home / Progessive Messaging / Virus Hunting

Several features of note from Time Magazine over the past few weeks including the Nov 21 issue cover story on US Servicemen and Women returning home from duty.



Written by Mark Thompson, The Other 1% examines the ever-widening disconnect between those in our Armed Forces and the rest of the population (including our elected representatives). The problem detailed by Thompson is an important one, but short of a there being mandatory service (which hardly anyone advocates), it's not really clear how to fix the problem and bring more in step the military and rest of US society. Also, it's neither a backing for Thompson's points nor a rebuttal, but another piece closely related (and referenced in the issue's Editor's Note by Richard Stengel) was The New Greatest Generation by Joe Klein on contributions made by returning veterans.

The other story from this issue that stood out was the Michael Scherer written profile on former Obama Administration staffer Van Jones. The Return of the Rabble Rouser looks at the efforts by Jones around messaging of progressive issues and features interesting content related to both the Occupy Wall Street movement and President Barack Obama. Extremely simplified point around Obama was any sort of effort has to be led by ideals rather than an individual. It certainly didn't seem to be a slam at the President, but rather a statement that the man is not the movement. Whether someone agrees with Jones political views or not, the concepts from him as laid out by Scherer are interesting ones.

Final recent Time piece to mention was Virus Hunter from the Nov 7 issue. The Bryan Walsh story looks at Nathan Wolfe and his work as founder and head of Global Viral Forecasting. Fascinating efforts from Wolfe in an effort to identify early on future infectious diseases so outbreaks can be prevented prior to the level of a full-blown pandemic.

PTSD Comfort Dogs & Other Stuff - from Time Magazine

Some interesting stuff from the Nov 22 issue of Time Magazine.



Foremost was "Bringing Dogs to Heal" about the pairing of pets with Veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's a well written piece from Mark Thompson and is accompanied by this video from Time's website...

Also from this same issue of Time was a book review of "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption". The book is about track athlete and Army Air Corps draftee Louis Zamperini and written by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand.

Finally, neither had actual articles written on the topics, but also of note from this issue was mention of three different new ventures... with the first two included in Time's "50 Top Inventions 0f 2010."

- The Flipboard iPad app

- The new Bookprint website from Scholastic. Idea behind You Are What You Read (as it's also known) is a Social Networking site noting favorite books from both public figures and everyday folk. It's an interesting concept that reminds me of the book community site Shelfari

- The Responsible Homeowner Reward Program from Loan Value Group. Started by the Howard Hubler (of the $9B in bad mortgage bets made at Morgan Stanley), underwater homeowners can sign up and then get a cash sum at the time they lay off their loan in full (after consistently making payments up to that point.

Attempted Airline Terrorism Story From Time

Interesting (and disconcerting) cover story from the latest issue of Time Magazine.



Titled "What We Can Learn from Flight 253", it examines the attempted detonation of a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight into Detroit on Christmas Day. As the piece by Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson reveals, would be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came very close to his goal of blowing up the plane... which raises a host of questions about both how that occured and also what our response was.

Abdulmutallab used a similar explosive to what hopeful shoebomber Richard Reid used, only rather than in his shoe, it was sewed into his underwear. While it's true that there are some next-generation airport screening devices that would have detected the bomb-making gear, the standard metal detectors at most US airports wouldn't have spotted it. Additionally, Abdulmutallab was on a US terrorist watchlist (but, only the first level which doesn't mean much).

Profiling is another way that authorities can try to help prevent terrorism, and in their book "Superfreakonomics", (which I reviewed here) Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner tell an anecdote about how effective it can be. However, profiling as well as full-body scanning machines at airports raise legitimate privacy concerns and can't be counted on to prevent bad things from ever occurring.

On the same subject of preventative measures, there's the concern of simply taking after the fact actions that don't help going forward. From his book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable", Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this idea... with a potential example being everyone taking their shoes off going through airport security.

Another thing to keep in mind is the recent example of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. As Nancy Gibbs detailed in her Time cover story (which I wrote about here), terrorism doesn't necessarily have to be sponsored, paid for and planned by a terrorist organization, but rather can be the act of a person or persons wanting to commit a terrorist act.

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All this considered, and as Duffy and Thompson argue in their cover story, you can't guarantee as a government that terrorism will always be prevented, so as prevention is practiced, you also have to look at response.

To this end, the Duffy and Thompson piece quoted Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano playing down the attempt by saying "once the incident occurred, the system worked" and spoke not of terrorism, but "man caused disasters." Also, "The Lesson: Passengers Are Not Helpless" by Amanda Ripley in this same issue of Time addresses both passenger response on Flight 253 and then how the FBI treated people after the attempted bombing was thwarted by the same passengers.

Just annoying stuff from Napalitano and the FBI...

The whole things is a big nut and tough to easily solve, but after reading the pieces both both Ripley and Duffy/Thompson (as well as past stuff), I think our government can do a better job of it's preventative measures, but perhaps even more importantly... of communicating with us as adults who understand we live in a dangerous world in which bad things can happen.

Time Magazine - Apr 13 Issue

Lots of interesting writing from the April 13 issue of Time Magazine (which was subtitled the "Special Environment Issue").

The most profound piece was titled "Why Are Army Recruiters Killing Themselves?". Written by Mark Thompson, it's a painful look at the pressures put on Army recruiters (particularly those out of the Army's Houston recruiting battalion) to "make mission" and meet recruiting numbers. A job characterized by 15-19 hour work days and belittlement by leadership... very messed up.

Another interesting story was by Michael Grunwald and titled "How Obama is Using the Science of Change". It looks at some of the social science behind the Obama campaign and office message, specifically how the field of behavioral economics is employed. Some of the examples put out were how get out the vote campaign efforts often promoted the idea of record turnouts to get people to "emulate their neighbors" and the more recent idea of opt-out 401K programs to encourage savings.

Also from the Grunwald article was mention of books written by some of the Obama advisers that made up what's referred to as his "behavioral dream team":

- "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein

- "Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism" by George Akerlof & Robert Shiller

- "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions" by Dan Ariely