Op-Eds

The universal nature of music, art and literature explains their enduring appeal and allows their creators the opportunity to reach a global audience.

Although there are many possible explanations for the current political dysfunction in the U.S., a leading suspect is the conservative transformation of the Republican Party over the past half-century.

When Nelson Rockefeller dropped out of the Republican presidential race in June 1964, Barry Goldwater was left with an apparently insurmountable delegate lead and, almost certainly, the task of defeating incumbent President Lyndon Johnson.

Record companies, book publishers, movie studios and other media corporations are caught up in efforts to equate all copying of their works with theft. In fact, if we genuinely want to promote creativity, we must encourage copying.

Hollywood’s best box office years ever were 2009 and 2010. Net revenue from book sales was up 5.6 percent in 2010 from 2008. And sales of e-books, in particular, grew 1,274 percent in those two years.

I am not an expert on health-care policy, but I do know something about job creation. So when a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee asked me to testify about the effect on employers of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes known as Obamacare, I thought I could offer some insights.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the most common way U.S. buyers finance a home purchase, isn’t the ideal instrument its supporters claim it to be.

“It shall be what o’clock I say it is,” declares Petruchio in “The Taming of the Shrew,” to which his companion Hortensio jovially retorts: “Why, so this gallant will command the sun.” Next month, the 193 member states of the International Telecommunications Union will meet in Geneva and attempt to do exactly that.

This Christmas, whether you celebrate the arrival of Santa Claus, the birth of Jesus Christ or the chance to eat Chinese food and see any movie you want, spare a thought for Pope Liberius. He’s the man responsible for setting its date as Dec. 25.

In the 1970s, my fieldwork as a young sociologist led me to interview white, working-class families in Boston. Our team talked with about 100 families in a place where factories and shops were organized so that each person was meant to have a fixed niche and stay in it. This formal structure had deep roots in the 19th century.