For more than a decade, NewWork News has surveyed the world's news having to do with life and work in the revolutionary new world economy. Over all these years, we have not made a significant effort to distinguish between straight reporting and editorial comment.

Written by Gary Johnson, NewWork News each day is more like a newspaper or magazine column than a newspaper's front page. However, nearly every item is linked to at least one original story from somebody else's "front page" so as to enable our readers easily to examine the original story without deliberate interpretation or commentary.

Some NewWork News items are highly analytical. Several of these have been gathered together for presentation below. All have been written by Gary Johnson.

The Oracle of Omaha is still optimistic (Saturday 2/28/09)
Well, sort of. For the long-run, anyway. He believes in the American economy, even though Warren Buffett's company has had its worst year ever. Moreover, he expects the remainder of 2009 to be very bad as well.

It all reminds us of the old gag about the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. The pessimist believes that things can't get any worse, but the optimist believes they can.

More bad news for newspapers (Saturday 2/28/09)
CBS News tells about what may be the growing likelihood of the death of newspapers as we have known them. Still, it's interesting to examine CBS' headline: "Newspapers' Woes Worsening." They could easily have emphasized that radio and television are experiencing similar woes for similar reasons.

If you're standing in the unemployment line, it might be easy to find a lawyer (Saturday 2/28/09)
In fact, you might be standing between two unemployed attorneys. A huge international law firm lays off 190 attorneys as well as 250 other people.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Enhancing Education (Saturday 2/28/09)
America has a particularly serious public education problem. It's not that all U.S. public schools are awful; in fact, some are wonderful. However, because of the way American K-12 education is financed, some are several times better than others, in large part, because some communities are filled with affluent college graduates who also are great parents, while others are filled with impoverished adults who lack rudimentary parenting skills.

As a consequence, schools differ wildly in terms of the resources they have available, and pupils differ wildly in terms of the readiness that they bring to school with them.

Nonetheless, new technologies can improve nearly all aspects of the educational process in any school. Here's Enhancing Education from Columbia University in New York.

Hey, graveyard, here they come (Friday 2/27/09)
If you're like us and think there's nothing else quite like a really good newspaper, you should hurry and read one before they're all gone. What will replace them? We haven't the remotest idea. It certainly won't be NewWork News, and we don't believe that it will be other Internet sources or cable or over-the-air television newscasts either.

As we've pointed out, all of the editorial content (not including commercials) from one of the evening network newscasts would fit into PART of one column on one page of the Washington Post or New York Times. As Walter Cronkite pointed out many years ago, it's simply not possible to become well-informed by limiting yourself to TV news. Both of the papers mentioned publish book-length editorial content every day. That's EVERY day.

Meanwhile, the so-called "new media" make it easier for people to "censor themselves," meaning that, if you want, you can now expose yourself to nothing other than expressions of what you already believe, meaning that your present ideas--whatever they are--are highly likely to become reinforced and hardened. It's fairly grim to think about how things will be if everybody is doing that, and the demise of newspapers would make it a whole lot easier.

After nearly a century and a half, the Rocky Mountain News has published its final edition. The San Francisco Chronicle could be next, and the Minneapolis Star Tribune is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Long Island's Newsday is among those papers whose influence extends far beyond the people who read the paper itself. It hasn't quite been a "national newspaper" as the New York Times or Washington Post have been, but, in its way, it has been important to all of American life. It's trying to survive too, and Yinka Adegoke explains some of the things the paper is trying.

It isn't only the newspapers. Traditional media of all types, including radio and television networks and local stations, suddenly find themselves faced with a "perfect storm." Newspapers have been struggling for several years, but they certainly aren't alone. Radio and TV also depend on business advertising, and, with the severe recession, businesses are cutting back and also trying to survive. Advertising revenues for newspapers, as well as radio and television stations and even the networks, have fallen off a cliff. What's next?

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Islam in Southeast Asia (Friday 2/27/09)
According to research data, Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, including the United States. Until recent years, most Americans have ignored it, but have good reason to pay attention now. Also, even though many Americans seem to associate Islam with Arab countries in the Middle East, the world's largest Islamic population is in Indonesia. Here's Islam in Southeast Asia.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Agriculture, Climate Change, and Carbon Sequestration (Thursday 2/26/09)
The majority of America's electricity is produced from burning coal, and the United States has enough coal to last a very long time. However, continuing to use it as we have might contribute mightily to making planet Earth more like planet Venus. So, wouldn't it be nice if we could have "clean coal," capturing the CO2 notoriously produced by this particular type of fossil fuel, and sequestering it inside the Earth where it came from in the first place?

Well, it's just a thought, and even though Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer says that he knows how it can be done, many experts are saying that it won't work, and that there's no such things as "clean coal."

At any rate, Agriculture, Climate Change, and Carbon Sequestration from researchers Schahczenski and Hill examines agriculture's impact on climate change and also looks at carbon sequestration.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Study of the Spanish-Speaking People of Texas (Tuesday 2/24/09)
The southwestern portion of the United States has become largely bilingual. For the most part, it's that portion of the U.S. that was once part of Mexico, although the Mexican diaspora has affected most regions. If English-speaking Americans would like to become multilingual, they could do worse than starting by learning Spanish.

The number of Spanish-speaking people in Texas has been growing during recent decades, and University of Texas Professor George Sanchez did much to document this segment of the Texas population, including his teaming with photographer Russell Lee. The Study of the Spanish-Speaking People of Texas presents hundreds of Lee's photographs taken during a brief period in 1949.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: The Most Stimulated States (Monday 2/23/09)
Some states will be receiving more stimulus money from the huge federal package than others, but some are fairly hard to understand. For instance, North Dakota will be receiving more money PER PERSON than many of the most afflicted states, even though, as we and others have reported, N. D.'s economy still seems to be in pretty good shape.

Soros' grim assessment (Sunday 2/22/09)
George Soros says that the current international financial crisis is worse than the Great Depression, and he doesn't see a solution on the horizon.

If that doesn't get your attention, swallow a few more aspirin and consider this: Lord Nicholas Stern said in Cape Town, South Africa that the environmental crisis could set off mass migrations and an extended world war.

. It was World War II that ended the Great Depression, so it's possible that this could be considered fairly fortunate news, but maybe not.

After Johnny Carson retired from "The Tonight Show," he called David Letterman in New York. on the air "How are things in California?" Letterman asked.

"Great," Carson answered. "The mud slides are putting out the fires."

Is Dubai's current problem a harbinger of things to come in the Middle East? (Sunday 2/22/09)
Dubai has too much debt, and the government of the United Arab Emirates is offering to help.

Dubia's current problems seem to be a result of the international credit crisis, but some of the Middle Eastern countries have been engaging in profligate spending because of their oil riches. However, what happens if the West's appetite for oil subsides because of the full exploitation of renewable sources of energy?

More or less the same thing that will happen to Las Vegas if Hoover Dam is ever disabled, we would guess. The Middle East and Las Vegas will become best-known as sources of hot sand, for which nobody is likely to be willing to pay very much.

Incidentally, America's appetite for oil is matched only by its insatiable appetite for drugs. The U. S. provides a tremendous market for drugs, and is the principal reason that Mexico's multibillion dollar drug wars are beginning to spill into the United States while Mexico's government itself is threatened.

Chaos in a failed state on America's immediate southern border wouldn't be quite enough fun, either for the 100 million or so Mexicans directly affected, or for the United States. In fact, some experts are saying that Mexico's drug wars constitute as big a national security threat to the United States as events in Iran or Pakistan.

That might be a bit of a stretch, because, so far, at least, the Mexican drug lords don't have nuclear weapons and don't seem in imminent danger of getting them.

Well, not so far, at least, but international trading in weapons is brisk, and many sellers are willing to supply whatever is wanted to whoever has the money, including powerful non-governmental folks.

Incidentally, where are all those conventional weapons coming from that drug lords are using to kill people. Why, mostly from the United States, of course.

Paul Volcker expects the current economic crisis to have far-reaching geopolitical effects (Friday 2/20/09)
Will global regulation come, as the former Federal Reserve Chairman believes, and will it mean significant erosion of national sovereignty; i.e., a reorganization of the world? Here's more from Eileen Aj Connelly in New York.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Academic Earth (Thursday 2/19/09)
Here's another reason for not mortgaging your future by formally enrolling in a university program. Academic Earth offers more than 1500 video lectures on a wide variety of topics. Registration is required, but it's free.

A tremendous number of ideas and great amounts of information are now available via the Internet, public libraries, and so on, and much of it is free. However, whether you enroll in a college or university will depend on how much you or prospective employers value the "blessings" of professors or certificates or other symbols from accredited institutions.

Our attitude is that the ideas behind Einstein's famous E = MC2 formula probably will be as important in 10,000 years as they are today, long after contemporary institutions and the various meanings of the term "academic degree" have been forgotten--except by a few archeologists (or whatever they will be called by that time).

You can learn nearly anything of genuine value on your own, particularly now. It won't be necessary to accumulate tens of thousands of dollars of long-term student debt in order to do it.

However, your intellectual appetites really must be very strong. While it's no longer necessary to attend college in order to learn most things of value, it IS necessary to spend a great deal of time and effort acquiring knowledge, whatever its source. Do you REALLY spend several hours per day studying? If not, you'd better enroll in college. It's easy for humans to deceive themselves.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Historians Presidential Leadership Survey (Wednesday 2/18/09)
Dozens of presidential historians were asked by C-SPAN to rank American presidents on several leadership qualities, both in 2000 and in 2009. For one thing, some presidents gained stature in the eyes of the historians over the nine-year period. For instance, the passage of time apparently has made John Kennedy look a bit better, and Bill Clinton considerably better.

Other surveys show that being out of office for a while seems to soften the general public's view of some presidents as well, so there may be hope for George W. Bush who left office as one of America's least popular presidents.

In fact, his pubic approval rating was about the same as Harry Truman's in 1952. Now, though Truman is listed among the top five by the historians surveyed. According to other surveys, he has similar stature among members of the general public, and both Democratic and Republican politicians have been quoting him during recent years.

Probably the most hated president of all during his administration was Abraham Lincoln. Now he's number 1 on most lists and his image is on the currency.

So, President Bush may be right when he says that it will be 50 years before anyone will be able to tell what sort of job he really did while in the White House.

Warren Harding is always listed near the bottom of these kinds of rankings. Some years ago, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington displayed a quotation from President Harding outside a presidential exhibit. "My god, this is a hell of a job," said Mr. Harding.

It is said that Warren Harding became president mostly because he looked like a movie star. But, then, some historians have suggested that a major part of George Washington's public appeal was that he looked great on a horse.

To Tom Friedman and a lot of young people in India, "ET" doesn't refer to "extraterrestrial," but "energy technology" (Monday 2/16/09)
New York Times columnist, best-selling book author, and three-time Pulitzer Prize recipient Thomas Friedman is in India again where he has been given additional reason to suspect that doing, doing, doing is better than talking, talking, talking.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Crossroads to Freedom (Monday 2/16/09)
"Freedom" is a popular political buzzword. It has been part of many types of political rhetoric over many years. At the very least, it is fair to ask WHO is free FROM what or free to DO what? Some theorists have claimed that those who talk a lot about "freedom" really are interested in power.

However, Crossroads to Freedom probably doesn't stretch the word's meaning all that much, because the site deals with issues that are fairly specific and with which most observers probably won't quarrel. The site is about the civil rights era in Memphis.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Afghanistan Analyst (Sunday 2/15/09)
Afghanistan is a mystery to many people in the world, including many Americans, and, of course, many Russians. Also, it's a hard to keep up with who is fighting whom. A coalition dominated by the United States overthrew Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who was a U. S. ally a few years earlier. In Afghanistan, the U. S. helped Afghani insurgents defeat and drive the Soviets out, and those insurgents became the Taliban, whom the U. S. is now fighting in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan. Confused yet? Maybe the Afghanistan Analyst can help clarify things.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Witnessing the Holocaust (Thursday 2/12/09)
This BBC site--Witnessing the Holocaust--gives Holocaust deniers quite a lot to explain. In addition, if you hurry, you'll be able to talk to people in many parts of the world who still have numbers tattooed on their arms from their own days in the Nazi death camps. You'll have to hurry, though, because most of these people are getting to be awfully old. Fortunately, all traces of the Holocaust will not evaporate when they go. That would make it too easy for the Holocaust deniers to spread their ideas and for vast sections of the population to accept them.

Why is this farmer in town looking for a job? (Monday 2/9/09)
Andrew Martin writes in the New York Times about new Department of Agriculture data showing that an increasing number of people from cities seem to have caught "green acres" fever, but soon are searching for a job to subsidize their farm earnings. Problem is, people who really make a living off the land tend to be people who really know what they're doing and who have the wherewithal to operate a larger small business. Mom and Pop operations usually don't make it anymore.

The President says that his stimulus plan is urgent (Saturday 2/7/09)
With jobs throughout the American economy disappearing like fireflies, President Obama says that it's particularly important for Congress to pass his stimulus bill and send it to the White House for his signature without delay.

Incidentally, the President says that he is NOT Irish, so his last name is NOT spelled "O' Bama."

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: United Nations Diplomatic Conferences (Saturday 2/7/09)
The United Nations has had its critics since its founding, and it has many critics today. For example, many of the member nations are not democracies, and can vote to overwhelm the democratic nations. Many people find that to be ironic and unacceptable.

However, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it's better to spend our time arguing than fighting. We don't know how many armed conflicts have been prevented by the UN, but we do know that a principal mission of the international organization is to prevent war. The UN has played key roles in eight major diplomatic conferences since World War II ended.

GE's head is nervous about some provisions of the rescue program (Thursday 2/5/09)
Jeff Immelt smells protectionism and doesn't like the idea of salary caps either. He believes that the "buy America" provision will undermine U. S. exports, Moreover, he doesn't believe that America's top executives will be inspired by a half-million dollars per year. But, where will they go? China?

A so-called "free economy" is one in which buyer and seller are able to agree on a price, independent of outside influence, including that from the government. So long as it's investor money and so long as investors have a say on how their money is spent, it's none of anyone else's business how much they choose to pay for something, including a CEO. However, if it's NOT their money--if it's taxpayer money, for instance--well, this is a little different, and it shows how pumping public funds into a business can foul things up. But, what else can be done right now?

What happens when American incomes decrease? (Tuesday 2/3/09)
Americans retrench, that's what. Consumer spending is down for the sixth consecutive month, and Americans have been saving more.

Incidentally, new data indicate that manufacturing declined again last month, and the auto industry had a bad January, as well. In fact, Kimberly Johnson and Tom Krisher report that auto sales were at a 26-year low.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Survey and Questionnaire Tutorial (Tuesday 2/3/09)
It always amusing us to hear politicians say things like, "Well, the American people believe that..." There are more than 300 million Americans. Which ones are they talking about?

All college statistics students have heard about the great Literary Digest survey fiasco in 1936. Forecasts based on their survey results suggested that Alf Landon would win the 1936 presidential election by a landslide, so what happened? Just the opposite: Franklin Roosevelt won virtually all of the states and nearly all of the electoral votes.

The Literary Digest pollsters surveyed a couple of million voters, so how could they have gotten it so wrong that it eventually put the magazine itself out of business?

We now know that a sample of a few thousand probably will be large enough, no matter how large the population, and a sample size of a few hundred may suffice. If you think this is counterintuitive, it's just the beginning.

Among other things, the Literary Digest demonstrated that it's possible to have an enormous sample that is totally unrepresentative of the population of interest.

Of course, the survey people probably understood that there was a lot that they didn't know. Their survey was conducted less than three-quarters of a century after the the Civil War ended, after all. During the War, they were still doing battlefield amputations, because they knew nothing about the risk of infection or that there was a whole world of life that was too small to see with the naked eye. The germ theory of disease was just developing at a few universities. It was very early. We shouldn't attempt to hold the 1936 survey people to 21st century standards. They weren't stupid.

Nonetheless, in a variety of ways, the Literary Digest survey showed the importance of methodology. As Stanford University professor Philip Zimbardo has emphasized so many times, "WHAT we know depends entirely on HOW we know it."

Truer words have never been spoken. Well, maybe there have been, but these words are true enough.

A lot has been learned about survey methodology since the great Literary Digest fiasco, and the Statpac organization explains quite a number of them in their Survey and Questionnaire Tutorial.

Moreover, we believe that statistics should be regarded as part of basic education at both high school and college levels, even though students often refer to it as "sadistics." In the modern world, students will be surrounded throughout their lives by phenomena that are inherently statistical, and making sense of these things without this most important branch of applied mathematics will be about as easy as understanding pharmacy while leave out all that stuff about chemistry.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Center for Aging Services Technologies (Monday 2/2/09)
Are there engineers making use of what we now know and can do technologically for the benefit of older people? Absolutely, and you can learn a lot by examining the Center for Aging Services Technologies site.

Incidentally, if you're still trying to overcome stereotypes, it's probably important to understand that, in many ways, older people are about the same as younger people, except, well, they're older.

Not long ago, a seventy-five-year-old said that the hardest thing about being old is that "people treat you as though you've always been an old person. I'm really new at this. I spent a long time being young, a VERY long time being middle-aged, but I've gotten old only recently. I'm new at this."

BOTH stimulus and restructuring? (Sunday 2/1/09)
Noted New York Times writer David Sanger asks the question that is on many minds: "Can the government fashion a fast and efficient economic stimulus while also seizing the moment to remake America?"

The Obama administration is trying to work fast on several fronts, some of them related. Krishna Guha writes from Washington about the intended TARP overhaul.

Incidentally, thank god they're not going to call the stimulus plan the "Reform and Investment Program." The abbreviation for that would be "RIP," which usually has a different meaning.

Today's NewWork News Web Tip: Climate Change (Sunday 2/1/09)
Along with many other people, staff at the Organisation For Economic Co-Operation and Development have been concerned with the effects of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath on the world's climate. Of course, the enormous population increases that the Earth has experienced in recent decades have had a lot to do with it, but these are mostly a consequence of the Industrial Revolution too. At any rate, here are some of the fruits the OECD's Climate Change efforts over recent years.

Incidentally, there still are persons who don't believe in "global warming," or believe that global warming is a temporary phenomenon, but DO believe in climate change. For instance, a leading Russian newspaper, which did not build a very good reputation in the West during the long decades of the Soviet Union, recently suggested that an ice age is coming soon.

Most experts outside Russia believe that another ice age IS coming, but they tend not to think that it is imminent. Maybe during the next millennium, for instance, when it would be right on time, considering what we know about the history of the Earth.

What the study quoted by Pravda is referring to are the Milankovich cycles, and these are well-documented. But, climatologists throughout the world are somewhat concerned about the so-called "conveyor belt" too. This refers to the regular movement of sea water from equatorial regions to warm the northern latitudes. It's possible that "global warming" could result in so much melting of ice in the polar regions as to disrupt the "conveyor belt," triggering a new ice age soon.

Will it happen? Nobody knows, because nobody during the period of recorded history--including the researchers--has experienced the novel conditions that Earth faces now. But, IF it happens, it could be the real thing--not the sort of "little ice age" that we had a few centuries ago. Remember Hans Brinker?

A new ice age could last 100,000 years. Everything we see around us and call "civilization" is a product of the past several thousand years since the end of the last ice age.

At any rate, whatever the consequences, the warming of the atmosphere and seas as a consequence of human activity surely seems important for humanity's future.