Entries by Jeffrey Ian Ross

Sound Check? Music, Noise, and Street Culture

It’s Spring again. After a long hard year with COVID-19 bearing down on us, the roll out and adoption of vaccines to address this global health crisis, and the shadow of the wreckage left behind by former President Trump, an increasing number of city dwellers are emerging from their residences and on to the streets […]

Small colleges and universities need to embrace academic research, scholarship, and creative activities produced by their faculty

Over the past decade, many universities and colleges in the United States and elsewhere have had to confront drastic budget cuts. Declining enrollments, stiff competition among institutions of higher education, financial mismanagement, changes in the way instruction is delivered (i.e., online education), and now the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a decrease in revenue and […]

Could the trial of Derek Chauvin be a turning point in America policing?

The criminal trial of Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, who is accused of killing 46 year old African-American George Floyd, is important on so many levels for different constituencies in the United States and elsewhere. For the family and friends of Floyd, and the majority of African Americans in this country, the trial […]

Taming the devil you know: The White House’s ambitious agenda to make good on their promises to the left and bring Trump supporters into the fold

Biden, Harris and the Democrats ran a political campaign not just to oust former reality television star and occasional President Donald Trump, but to implement a series of bold changes that in principle both the left and the right could agree on. Their main strategy, over the past three months appears to be maybe we […]

Parking, power, and externalities

It’s a simple fact of life. People need and want to get places, and unless they walk everywhere, we need somewhere to temporarily or permanently store the objects that they use to assist them getting to their destinations. Some of those items (e.g., bicycles, hover boards, razors, roller blades, and skateboards) are relatively easy to […]