Look, we'll have to confront the pathologies of poverty at some point. We can deal with them cheaply at the front end, in infancy. Or we can wait and jail a troubled adolescent at the tail end. To some extent, we face a choice between investing in preschools or in prisons.

In general, talking about human rights tends to be very persuasive for people who care about human rights.

The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.

The equivalent of five jumbo jets' worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered.

I think when hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, you might have to set aside some principles.

The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.