John Nordin

John Nordin is a Mint Press columnist who divides his time as a professor and a researcher between the Twin Cities and Greece, where he specializes in Greek politics, international relations and the economy. John holds a Ph.D. from MIT, and has worked as a Lutheran pastor, a computer science teacher in Kenya and a writer.

Why Do They Hate Obamacare?

There probably are valid arguments to be made against the Affordable Care Act. The problem is that Tea Partiers aren’t making any arguments at all.

John Nordin
By John Nordin

They really do hate it, don't they? ForAmerica, a Tea Party group, calls the Republicans who shut down the government "chickens" for failing to be aggressive enough in stopping Obamacare, a law they term "horrible" and a "monstrosity," predicting it will “destroy our healthcare system and our economy." At TeaPartyPatriots the comments are full of

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The Paranoid Style Of Being Anti-Obama

One historian’s analysis of the 1964 presidential election offers an explanation of the American far right’s intransigence today.

John Nordin
By John Nordin

Around the time President Kennedy was killed in 1963 and Barry Goldwater succeeded in capturing the nomination of the Republicans for president in 1964, the noted historian Richard Hofstadter published "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a work now considered a classic. In this and two other lesser-known essays about the conservative

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You Can Be Too Careful: Calculating The Risks Of Energy Resources

While there’s no risk-free utopia to be achieved, America’s current evaluation of the risks of various power sources tends toward the irrational.

John Nordin
By John Nordin

In early July of this year, a freight train loaded with crude oil left a small town in western North Dakota headed east. A day later it was being handled by a small railroad company in Quebec. Night came and the engineer, operating the train by himself, was ready to finish his shift. He left the train on the seldom-used main track, as was normal.

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A Primer On The Dangers Of Nuclear Power

Most everything is at least slightly radioactive, and there’s no truly safe level of radiation. But some radiation is more dangerous than others.

John Nordin
By John Nordin
Japan Radiation Risk

Assessing the dangers of nuclear power requires coming to some understanding of radiation, how much of it we get exposed to and how dangerous that exposure is. Unfortunately, this is a topic that not only brings out the irrational in some people but also is genuinely difficult to untangle. The first problem is being clear about what we are

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Fukushima: What Sort Of Crisis? (Part 2)

Media reports of radioactive leaks into the Pacific Ocean are conflating — and exaggerating — two separate incidents, while ignoring legitimate safety issues.

John Nordin
By John Nordin

(Don't miss part 1.) Two evolving stories are the current focus of news from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in Japan. The first story is about leaks, the second about leaks into the ocean. Both are full of uncertainties and ambiguities that the media is mostly missing.   Two leaks There are two different stories of leaking

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Fukushima: What Sort Of Crisis?

The media plays on nuclear contamination fears, drowning out far more lethal consequences of Japan’s tsunami while exaggerating the dangers of nuclear power.

John Nordin
By John Nordin
This aerial view shows the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan, Monday, March 11, 2013. (AP Photo/Kyodo News)

Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor complex, severely damaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, was back in the news this week with stories of an apparently massive and uncontrollable leak of dangerously contaminated water into the ocean. Or maybe not, since World Nuclear News, an industry source, claimed four days later that the leak was

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Explaining America

Why are we so different from Europe, or other industrialized nations?

John Nordin
By John Nordin
** FILE ** In this Feb. 8, 2009 file photo, the American flag flies at the U.S. Capitol (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Americans who travel often encounter people who want to understand why the United States is the way it is. Why are we so different from Europe, or other industrialized nations? Why do we seem uninterested in foreign news, isolated from the world despite our vast economic reach? There are many factors of course, and untangling cause and effect would

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