By Matt Reed. The Onion did a piece a while back on Americans’ attitude toward mass transit. As the piece had it, 98 percent of Americans favor increased use of mass transit by other people; that way, their own commutes wouldn’t be slowed by so much traffic. More...

By Matt Reed. If you haven’t already seen the CityLab piece on Helsinki’s new central library, check it out. The pictures alone are well worth it, though the article is excellent, too. It’s a reminder of what a culture can do if it decides to make something a priority. More...

By Matt Reed. I’ll admit being impressed by the creative dysfunction of the Board in the Chronicle’s story about Wayne State.  Among other things, it can’t agree on whether it fired its president or not. More...

By Matt Reed. Note to my local politicians: no, this isn’t about you. You are all, without fail, brilliant, well meaning, wise, devastatingly handsome/pretty and farsighted. This is about all of those other politicians. #notallpoliticians. More...

By Matt Reed. As family members, longtime readers and close friends know, I enjoy the occasional metaphor. One hit me this week that I can’t quite get out of my head. More...

By Matt Reed. "Full need*"
I spent some time this weekend scrutinizing ways to save money on cellphone plans. You’d think it would be relatively straightforward, but I had to break out a spreadsheet because each plan comes with its own qualifiers, asterisks, bonuses and unknowns. “Plus taxes and fees” appeared a lot, meaning something different in nearly every case. Sales tax was clear enough: New Jersey charges a nice, round 6.625 percent. But some providers charge other taxes and fees on top of that, and some don’t. Add “switch and get a free(ish) phone, except for sales tax, and you get it back in installments” calculations, and varying levels of compatibility between our current phones and various carriers, and it got far more complicated than it should have been. More...

By Matt Reed. When we know individually what we forget collectively. More...

By Matt Reed. I was as struck as everyone else by the juxtaposition of two stories at Inside Higher Ed on Wednesday. One of them described a potential lawsuit against the University of California for using the SAT and ACT, on the grounds that the tests are discriminatory. The other used ACT results to claim that high school students are less college ready than they used to be; the usual hand-wringing followed in the comments. More...

By Matt Reed. Obstacles to culture change. More...