Commentary / World Feb 18, 2019
Sleazy journalism can serve the public good
Long before Bezos's battle with the National Enquirer, a fight involving a scabrous newspaper led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision expanding freedom of the press.
Stephen Mihm
For Stephen Mihm's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Commentary / World Sep 2, 2018
Does corruption matter to voters? It depends
Democrats' main target should be the Republican Party, not the president.
Commentary / World Mar 9, 2018
FDR's gun-control strategy was based on taxes
His administration gave gangsters 3,700 reasons to stop buying machine guns.
Commentary / World Feb 26, 2018
Amazon's labor-tracking wristband has a history
Jeff Bezos is stealing from a 19th-century playbook.
Commentary / World Apr 18, 2017
Overbooking is a problem as old as the airline industry
Overbooking was the solution to the costly problem of 'no-shows' — people who reserved a seat but failed to board — that emerged in the late 1940s.
Commentary / Japan Apr 12, 2017
Why Westinghouse was doomed at its creation
The world has spent nearly 60 years trying to make economic sense of nuclear power, with limited success. It may be time to pull the plug.
Commentary Nov 21, 2014
Islamic State's planned currency is so 7th century
Islamic State has announced plans to start its own currency, an essential building block for their larger goal of restoring an ancient Islamic empire.
Commentary / World Jan 28, 2014
Marijuana's sobering lessons from Prohibition
Like alcohol after the repeal of Prohibition, legal marijuana will be a profitable business kept on a tight leash. And we should expect the public health consequences tol be mixed, though hardly a disaster.
Commentary Nov 15, 2013
We knew artificial fats were bad for us by 1870s
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that trans fats are no longer "generally recognized as safe," and that banning them would prevent 7,000 deaths from heart disease each year.