By Linus Hoeller, Northwestern University Few Chicagoans can remember a time before the promises of a southward extension of the city’s public transportation backbone, the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line. However, none has seen it go beyond a mere promise. Decades have passed since the idea of extending the Red Line, going from the Northern…
Category: Progress
By Linus Hoeller, Northwestern University The concept of American decline has been around for about as long as America has been a global power. This is not surprising; when you are at the top, it can seem like the only way to go is down. The United States experienced its unipolar moment following the fall…
Few factors have as much of an influence on an incoming undergraduates’ decision of which university to attend as higher education rankings. For many prospective students, prestige and reputation play some of the biggest roles in their college decision. Applying to all Ivy League schools, or all “top 10” or “top 20” schools has become…
Thomas Edison is well-known for having had the bright idea of inventing the incandescent light bulb. The year was 1879 when this revolutionary invention was patented, and though it was initially decried by some as solely being a fad of the time, we truly couldn’t live without it today. But while the light bulb gets…
A case study by Linus Höller In 2016, Lima’s population was first estimated to have exceeded 10 million, officially making Peru’s capital a “megacity” and putting it in the same league as cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai and Ciudad de México. However, Lima was never meant to become this big, and certainly wasn’t founded in a convenient place to support…
We lead the best lives that humans have ever had. With all the doom and gloom going on in the world around us, seemingly unending wars being fought in the middle east and still all too many people suffering of extreme poverty and hunger in less economically developed countries, this is easy to forget. Yet it is true, and especially in light of seemingly unsolvable crises and problems, it is well worth slowing down and taking a look at the empirical evidence that exists, reminding ourselves that: yes, there are problems, but yes, our lives are actually pretty good.