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NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Jerusalem this morning that a 12-hour humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza that went into effect at 8 a.m. Israeli time (1 a.m. ET) looks to be holding.

Hundreds of Gaza residents were taking advantage of relative calm to stock up on supplies. Some 18 days ago, Israel launched an offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, hoping to wipe out sites lobbing rockets across the border and to destroy tunnels allegedly used to transport fighters and weapons.

But, despite Saturday's cease-fire, Israeli forces in Gaza are continuing to search out and eliminate the Hamas-built tunnels. The Israeli military says it has uncovered 31 concrete-lined tunnels so far, 11 of which were destroyed, Soraya says.

The West Bank and Jerusalem are also quiet following a number of Palestinian protests against Israel Friday that led to at least five people being killed.

A Hamas spokesman says all Palestinian factions will abide by the temporary cease-fire.

More than 900 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 37 Israeli troops and three civilians have been killed in the conflict.

News of the truce came on Friday after extensive and so far unsuccessful U.S. efforts to reach a broader truce. Despite reports by Israeli media that a deal being brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for a seven-day cease-fire had collapsed, Kerry insisted on Friday that it was only a matter of working through the details.

"They may have rejected some language or suggestion, but there was no formal proposal submitted by me on which a vote was ripe," he said.

"There's always mischief from people who oppose things. So, I consider that a mischievous leak," Kerry said of the reports that Israel's Security Cabinet had rejected the truce proposal outright.

As The Associated Press notes: "[The] temporary lull was unlikely to change the trajectory of the current hostilities amid ominous signs that the Gaza war is spilling over into the West Bank."

"In a 'Day of Rage,' Palestinians across the territory, which had been relatively calm for years, staged protests against Israel's Gaza operation and the rising casualty toll there. In the West Bank, at least six Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, hospital officials said."

Ever since its sweeping victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel has been regarded as the dominant military power in the Middle East. No Arab state has risked a full-fledged war in decades, and few question the conventional wisdom that Israel would swiftly defeat any national army in a traditional, head-to-head confrontation.

Yet for the third time in the past decade, Israel's powerful military finds itself in a protracted, messy fight with a small, elusive, Islamist group and has been unable to score a quick and decisive victory.

The current bloodletting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is nearly three weeks old and Israel has pounded the Palestinian territory, leaving more than 800 Palestinians dead, most of them civilians. Yet Israel has not halted the Hamas rockets and is still working to destroy a tunnel network it's cited as the main reason for the operation.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, speaking from his exile base in Qatar, said Hamas fighters have "destroyed the idea that the Israeli army is invincible."

Mashaal is hardly a neutral observer. Still, Hamas slugged it out with Israel for three weeks in December 2008-January 2009 and is demonstrating now that it has recovered to fight again on the same terms.

And back in 2006, Hezbollah fought Israel for 34 days in southern Lebanon before a cease-fire was declared. Israel delivered a ferocious blow and its northern border has been largely quiet since then. However, Hezbollah only grew stronger in the aftermath, becoming the dominant force in Lebanon and remaining a potential threat to Israel.

So why has Israel been frustrated repeatedly in these battles?

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You can find ramen, the Japanese noodle soup that's meant to be slurped, almost anywhere in the U.S. these days. Ramen shops continue to pop up, and you can find renditions on the menus of restaurants and gastropubs.

But there's a truly funky noodle spot in Cambridge called Yume Wo Karate that serves more than just ramen.

There aren't many restaurants where you get praised by everyone around you for clearing your plate or bowl. But that's exactly what happens at Yume Wo Katare.

"Everyone, he did a good job!"

You'll hear that again and again over the course of a meal in the cozy but loud space.

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Five years ago, printing your own book was stigmatized and was seen as a mark of failure.

"But now," says Dana Beth Weinberg a sociologist at Queens College who is studying the industry, "the self published authors walk into the room and they say, 'I made a quarter of a million dollars last year, or a hundred thousand dollars, or made ten thousand dollars, and it is still more than what some of these authors are making with their very prestigious contracts.'"

Weinberg says there is still a strong financial case to be made for publishing books the old fashioned way, but there are now many well-known independent authors who have made a fortune self-publishing online.

One of those authors, Hugh Howey, recently published a report arguing that self-published writers earn more money overall from eBooks than authors who have been signed by the big five publishing houses. The report, which Howey created with an anonymous data researcher who goes by the name "Data Guy," uses Amazon's sales ranking and crowd-sourced sales data to estimate authors' total earnings on eBooks.

The report has been attacked by critics who point out the figures don't include cash paid to authors as part of a book advances. And they say Howey is underestimating the money earned from old fashioned print sales. He's also been called a tool of Amazon in that company's war against established publishing houses.

Trustworthy data is difficult to come by. And Amazon doesn't release detailed sales numbers.

Howey says he's just trying to point out that self-publishing can be a decent way to make a living even if you aren't selling millions of books. And he points out that self-published authors are able to keep 70 percent of royalties on all eBook sales. As a result, he says, many relatively unknown authors are making a decent living self-publishing their work.

One of those authors is Michael Bunker, who has a long beard, close-cropped hair and a wide brim hat, and describes himself as an "accidental Amish Sci-Fi writer."

His latest book, Pennsylvania Omnibus, hit number 19 earlier this month on Amazon's best seller list. And Bunker's first book — about living off the grid — was an instant online success.

"It went to 29 on all of Amazon.com on the very first day," Bunker said. "And I got messages from agents and publishers. And I didn't know what I was doing. I had no clue what I was doing."

The first agent who reached him offered a $5000 advance and a guaranteed publishing deal.

"I made more than that yesterday," Bunker said.

Remember when movie companies just put Roman numerals at the end of titles when they made sequels? Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV. Well, not anymore.

This summer, we've had X-Men: Days of Future Past, with no mention that it's either the sixth or seventh X-Men movie, depending on how you're counting. Also 22 Jump Street, the across-the-street follow-up to 21 Jump Street. And Begin Again (which ought to be a sequel, but isn't).

Do you suppose they stopped numbering sequels so we wouldn't do the math? Totting up time spent — dollars spent — watching the same plot play out with variations. Five Die Hards, eight Planets of Apes, nine Elm Street Nightmares, a dozen Star Treks going boldly where pretty much everybody's gone by now.

It makes sense a studio might want to downplay that. Make things at least sound fresh. As with what I've come to think of as the "Harry Potter and the ..." movies, where book titles get our hero from pre-teen to young adult. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, up until the last couple, when they settle for Deathly Hallows, Part One and Part Two. Guess they figured that's catchier than Harry Potter and the Male Pattern Baldness.

Sometimes just using numbers for titles makes sense, as with Steven Soderbergh's Oceans trilogy about an ever-expanding gang of 11, then 12, then 13 con artists staging ever-more-elaborate casino heists.

But if you're not going to go with numbers, sequel titling does have some informal rules. For an action picture, you want to up the ante each time. Die Hard, Die Harder, Die Hard With a Vengeance. Or the Bourne Identity, rising to Supremacy, and then to Ultimatum, and then Simulacrum, or whatever that last one was without Matt Damon.

Movie Reviews

It's A Summer Sequel Spectacular With 'Dragon' And 'Jump Street'

Joshua Wolf Shenk doesn't believe in the myth of the lone genius. "What has one person ever done alone?" he asks NPR's Robert Siegel. "We think of Martin Luther King and Sigmund Freud and Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs as these great solo creators, but in fact, if you look into the details of their life, they are enmeshed in relationships all the way through."

Take Steve Jobs: "Jobs created Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak," says Shenk. "Flash-forward to the end of his life, a lot of the great work at the height of Apple was done with this design guru, Jonathan Ive. That's not an isolated story. That is the story of creativity. It's just not been told well before."

And that's the story Shenk tries to tell in his new book, Powers of Two. He argues that creativity is most commonly the result of two people interacting in a variety of ways: complementary collaboration, mutual inspiration, creative rivalry, whatever you want to call it.

He traces the creative partnerships of all stripes — choreographer George Balanchine and ballerina Suzanne Farrell, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the literary friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the basketball rivalry of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and the airborne partnership of Orville and Wilbur Wright. He talks with Siegel about what's so special about the number 2.

Like it or not, plastic packaging has become an ingrained part of the food system.

While it's clearly wasteful to buy salad, sandwiches and chips encased in plastic and then promptly throw that plastic away, we take for granted how it keeps so much of what we eat fresh and portable.

And behind many of those packages that allow us to eat on-the-go or savor perishable cookies or fish imported from the other side of the globe is a whole lot of science and innovation.

The plastic revolution in food packaging began in the 1960s, says Aaron Brody, a food packaging consultant and an adjunct professor of food science at the University of Georgia. It took off because plastic was lighter than glass, more protective than paper and relatively cheap.

"But there is no such thing as the perfect plastic material," Brody says. So a lot of our packaging is made by combining different types of food-grade plastic.

Take a bag of potato chips. It's mostly made out of a plastic called oriented polypropylene. "It's an excellent moisture barrier," Brody notes. And that's key, "because potato chips first start to deteriorate by absorbing moisture. People don't like soggy chips." To further strengthen the material, many chips bags have a thin aluminum coating on the inside.

A layer of polyethylene (the stuff plastic grocery bags are made of) is sandwiched between this inner layer and the outer layer, which displays the brand and nutrition info.

Before the bags are all sealed up, most companies fill them with nitrogen gas, Brody says. "It keeps the chips from getting crushed," he says. And whereas oxygen would cause the fat in the chips to oxidize and taste funny, nitrogen doesn't cause any chemical reactions that affect the flavor.

The Salt

Maybe That BPA In Your Canned Food Isn't So Bad After All

After The New York Times reported that Sen. John Walsh plagiarized at least a quarter of his master's thesis, the Montana Democrat is telling The Associated Press that post-traumatic stress disorder may have played a role.

"I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor," the Iraq war veteran said. "My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment."

Walsh told the AP that he was on medication at the time and was dealing with the suicide of a fellow veteran.

Walsh was appointed to the Senate in February, after Max Baucus resigned to become the U.S. ambassador to China.

On Wednesday, the Times published a report that combed through the 14-pages of "The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy," which Walsh submitted as his final paper to earn his Master of Strategic Studies degree from the United States Army War College.

The paper found that Walsh lifted whole sections from "academic papers, policy journal essays and books," without providing proper attribution.

The six recommendations Walsh makes, the paper reports, "are taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic."

These revelations are likely to have an impact in the fall elections, because Walsh is the Democratic nominee for a full term.

In recent memory, Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, was the last prominent politician to be in hot water for plagiarism. As It's All Politics reported, Paul was accused of lifting language from Wikipedia and news articles for several speeches.

A judge in Philadelphia issued an order today granting a request for a former Nazi camp guard to be extradited to Germany, but 89-year-old Johann "Hans" Breyer, who, according to his lawyer, had heart disease and dementia, died Tuesday, his lawyer told The Associated Press.

Attorney Dennis Boyle told the news agency that Breyer died Tuesday night at a Philadelphia hospital.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas R. Rice said in his ruling: "There is probable cause to believe that Breyer ... is the same person sought for aiding and abetting murder in Germany."

The extradition request was subject to U.S. government approval.

We told you about Breyer earlier this month when a judge denied him bail. The AP reported at the time:

"German authorities hope to try Breyer on accessory-to-murder charges for his guard service at the Auschwitz death camp in 1944. Breyer told The Associated Press in 2012 that he was forced to work there as an SS guard but never took part in the mass killing of Jews and others."

Amid another day of fighting, Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and began a whirlwind session of shuttle diplomacy.

As NPR's Michele Kelemen, who is traveling with Kerry, tells our Newscast unit, the secretary of state is "trying to talk to everybody" to see if he can broker a cease-fire and perhaps lay the groundwork for longer-term negotiations over the future of Gaza.

The Israeli offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is now entering its 16th day. Here's what you need to know:

— Kerry has already met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is also in Jerusalem on a parallel mission for peace.

"Kerry spoke briefly and mentioned that 30,000 people came to Max Steinberg's funeral," Michele reports, referring to an Israeli-American who died fighting for the Israel Defense Forces.

It used to be that if you were a public employee, you knew your pension benefits could not be touched.

That's no longer the case.

Pensions have been under political attack in recent years, with some politicians arguing they can't afford to fund generous retirements at the same time they're cutting services. Numerous states and cities have trimmed the type of pension plans they're offering employees — mostly new employees.

But pension benefits already earned have always been sacrosanct, protected by federal law and, often, state constitutions. Retirees could rest easy, knowing their money couldn't be touched.

The vote Monday in Detroit by retired city workers to cut their own benefits by 4.5 percent calls all that into question.

"Detroit has raised it as a possibility," says Daniel DiSalvo, a political scientist at City College of New York who studies public sector labor issues. "I don't think that most people, maybe with the exception of some unions, think pensions are inviolable."

With several other cases pending, it's not at all clear whether federal bankruptcy law trumps traditional pension protections. Pensions continue to have strong legal protection, and there's not going to be any great rush among states and cities to test whether cutting benefits for current retirees is something that will necessarily fly with the courts.

But the vote in Detroit does suggest that at least some pensioners might have to give up more than they ever expected.

"I think the deal in Detroit is going to mean that other troubled Michigan cities are more likely to reach deals," says Kim Rueben, a government finance expert at the Urban Institute.

Judges Growing Skeptical

The reason a big majority of retirees in Detroit were willing to accept cuts is that they worried they might be hurt worse if they didn't.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said late last year that federal bankruptcy law could override pension protections — including provisions in the Michigan Constitution.

Politics

What It's Like Living In A Bankrupt City

Want to borrow money for a car or a home this fall?

Oddly enough, the interest rates available months from now for big-ticket items may be determined by the prices you pay today for everyday consumer goods. When store prices are rising rapidly, policymakers start pushing interest rates higher, too.

But for the moment, at least, inflation appears mild enough to keep interest rates low for a long while.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index for June shows inflation running at an annual rate of just 2.1 percent — well below the historical average of 3.2 percent.

But instead of celebrating this low-inflation news, many economists are fretting about it. They look past consumer prices to see financial-asset prices. And they think too many of those, say tech stocks, are getting too expensive. They want interest rates to rise more quickly to tamp down those asset "bubbles."

This is turning into a huge, heated debate. Let's listen in.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress that maintaining low rates "likely will be appropriate for a considerable period" since inflation remains so tame. But Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire hedge fund manager, gave a televised speech criticizing the Fed, saying "the current policy makes no sense."

Fed critics see "bubbles" involving everything from stock prices to artworks to real estate in the Hamptons. They want the Fed to slow further price increases by making borrowed money more expensive.

Many economists say that's exactly what the Fed did back in 2000 when its interest rate hikes were followed by the sudden deflation of tech-stock prices.

Related NPR Stories

Business

Economists Say Inflation Is Tame; Consumers Aren't Buying It

It used to be that if you were a public employee, you knew your pension benefits could not be touched.

That's no longer the case.

Pensions have been under political attack in recent years, with some politicians arguing they can't afford to fund generous retirements at the same time they're cutting services. Numerous states and cities have trimmed the type of pension plans they're offering employees — mostly new employees.

But pension benefits already earned have always been sacrosanct, protected by federal law and, often, state constitutions. Retirees could rest easy, knowing their money couldn't be touched.

The vote Monday in Detroit by retired city workers to cut their own benefits by 4.5 percent calls all that into question.

"Detroit has raised it as a possibility," says Daniel DiSalvo, a political scientist at City College of New York who studies public sector labor issues. "I don't think that most people, maybe with the exception of some unions, think pensions are inviolable."

With several other cases pending, it's not at all clear whether federal bankruptcy law trumps traditional pension protections. Pensions continue to have strong legal protection, and there's not going to be any great rush among states and cities to test whether cutting benefits for current retirees is something that will necessarily fly with the courts.

But the vote in Detroit does suggest that at least some pensioners might have to give up more than they ever expected.

"I think the deal in Detroit is going to mean that other troubled Michigan cities are more likely to reach deals," says Kim Rueben, a government finance expert at the Urban Institute.

Judges Growing Skeptical

The reason a big majority of retirees in Detroit were willing to accept cuts is that they worried they might be hurt worse if they didn't.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes said late last year that federal bankruptcy law could override pension protections — including provisions in the Michigan Constitution.

Politics

What It's Like Living In A Bankrupt City

"A lady had a snake in a bag, when somebody opened the bag, that made the lady die."

That's the beginning of a story that Temba Morris often hears about the origins of Ebola. Morris runs a government health clinic in a remote village near Sierra Leone's border with Guinea. According to the story, then somebody else went and looked inside the bag.

"And the one who opened the bag also died," is what Morris hears next. The snake escaped into the Sierra Leone bush.

So there you have it: Ebola is an evil snake that will kill you if you look at it.

The striking thing about this story, which is told and retold, is that Ebola really did come here from Guinea and it currently is out of the bag.

But narratives like this are a dangerous distraction when health officials are dealing with a virus that spreads by human to human contact — and a lack of knowledge about how to stay safe.

In the remote northeastern corner of Sierra Leone dozens of new Ebola cases are being reported each week. As the virus spreads, so do rumors about the terrifying disease.

The first is that Ebola doesn't exist. Some say it's a ploy to extract money from the international aid agencies. Others say the people aren't dying from Ebola, they're dying from a curse.

Then there are people who accept that it exists but have unorthodox ideas about how it got there.

In the initial days some people said it could spread through drinking water and mosquitoes.

Given that it kills the majority of the people who get infected, Ebola is scary enough. If you believe it's water or mosquito-borne, it becomes almost overwhelmingly frightening.

The other central theme that pops up in many of the rumors about Ebola is that the white people brought it.

A plague hits and then a bunch of foreigners in space suits come and whisk away the corpses in shiny. white body bags. There've been stories that this all a scheme to harvest organs from the locals.

So when some people got sick, they fled to the forest or hid with relatives. Making it more likely they'll infect others. Some towns in Guinea have refused to allow any foreign health workers to enter at all.

Dr. Tim Jagatic of Doctors Without Borders says the misperceptions are understandable: "We created a hospital and a lot of people started to get sick and die. It's very difficult for them to make a connection that we are here to help."

Winning the communications battle is critical, he says: "The most effective way for us to end this epidemic is to focus on public health measures, learning how this disease is transmitted. Increasing the level of Hygiene amongst the people in the villages. Demystify and destigmatizing this disease."

Goats and Soda

No School, No Handshakes: Reporting On Ebola From Sierra Leone

If the Television Critics Association press tour of 2014, wrapping up Tuesday and Wednesday with presentations from PBS, has had a catchphrase, it's "audience measurement."

Critics heard an extended presentation from Nielsen on the very first day of tour about the company's plans to begin measuring viewership on mobile devices and, more generally, about its scramble to keep up – catch up, really – with the way television works now. Many days later, a panel of research analysts from broadcast as well as premium and basic cable outlets made what was in part a pitch to reporters to stop relying on overnight ratings, given the fact that it's not unusual for shows to increase their audiences 40 or 50 percent (or more) once DVR viewing from even the next three days is included. FX, in fact, has committed to not releasing overnight ratings for its shows at all, arguing that they're simply too misleading to be taken seriously. It will make its ratings announcements a few days later.

The easy read on the FX decision, of course, is that they don't want bad overnight ratings to be reported, and it's not that that isn't any part of it – they certainly aren't doing this so that you don't report in haste on their out-of-the-gate smashes. And networks have complained for a long time that this show or that one is misreported as a disaster because nobody waits for the reliable numbers; this is not a new phenomenon.

But it does require a bit of a shift in perspective when you realize that time-shifting has evolved to the point where watching a new episode of a show is only sort of something that happens at a particular time, such that you can meaningfully describe it in terms of what happened at that time. (That being true, while again not a new phenomenon, is a newer phenomenon than the chatter about it being true.) If you're only talking about measuring shows relative to each other, it might seem unimportant provided that all shows grow by roughly the same percentage. If everybody gains the same advantage from DVR viewing, the relative numbers are still right.

Everybody doesn't, though. And while it is an insistent battle cry of fans of low-rated shows that whatever they love is secretly hugely popular but not being measured properly, what emerged from the data was that it's more a matter of there being kinds of shows that are vastly more time-shifted than others. Reality shows are time-shifted relatively little, presumably because people want to know what happened before they get spoiled. Comedies are time-shifted more, and then dramas are time-shifted the most, meaning that if you take a reality show and a drama that are neck and neck in overnight ratings, the odds are that a few days later, a lot more people will have watched the drama.

Of course, the looming question is: assuming those numbers are in fact wonky in exactly the same way everybody is telling us they are, what difference does it make?

Readers are curious about ratings for two reasons, in my experience. The first is that they want to know whether shows are going to be canceled or not. The second is that they're curious about cultural stuff: whether a weird thing is a hit, whether a terrible thing tanks, and, fundamentally, what other people are interested in. (Some are also interested in the ins and outs of industry successes and failures in terms of producers' and executives' fates, but not many.)

That's where you find the nut of the problem, really. It's not only a measurement problem. It's also a contextual problem. Even in a hypothetical world of perfect information in which everybody could instantly know what how many people are watching what show, on what platform, at what time, with what fast-forwarding capability, what numbers are meaningful?

David Poltrack, the Chief Research Officer at CBS, made this pitch in talking about different kinds of numbers and whether Live +3 ratings (which include live viewing and the next three days on DVR, but do not count VOD, do not count apps, do not count Hulu and so forth): "I would like to make the point that your responsibility as reporters is, for most of you, is to report television as the social, cultural phenomenon that it is as well as the economic phenomenon it is. So Live+3 ratings are an economic phenomenon, but they don't reflect the cultural phenomenon of the medium, since they are only a limited part of the audience. If you're reporting on the economics of the business, Live+3 ratings are relevant. If you're reporting on cultural phenomenon called television, Live+3 ratings are far less relevant."

In other words, he says, what numbers are meaningful depends on what you're using them for. If you're talking about what makes money and what might get canceled, maybe you only care about those Live +3 ratings (which are already much more inclusive than what they call "live plus same day" or "Live +SD," which is basically just everybody who time-shifts until later on that same evening). But if you're actually trying to figure out what the viewership of something is, and what its cultural penetration is, and how many people like it, that number isn't so helpful. It seems self-evident, but also unsatisfying. What is the cultural relevance of audience size, past "huge hit" stories?

Furthermore, there we were, listening to four network research folks talk about ratings when ratings do not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean the same thing at every network. Kim Lemon, the Executive Vice President of Program Planning and Scheduling and Research for Showtime, made the point himself that Showtime doesn't really care in the same way about ratings, since it's not ad-supported, and it certainly doesn't have the same issues with online versus on-television viewing. As long as you have to be a Showtime subscriber to do it, they don't care whether you watch on your TV or on your phone or on a plane. All enthusiasm, for them, is of equal monetary value, essentially. It just has to make you subscribe. (Incidentally, their numbers are even more slanted toward time-shifted viewing — in part, probably, because their top stuff airs on the crammed-full Sunday night schedule.)

At CBS, on the other hand, it's very squishy to get information about how much it matters to them if you watch a show online. You're a viewer from a cultural standpoint, but you're not worth money the same way you are if you're eyeballing ads and watching live. (You will watch ads online too, but different ones.)

The bottom line is this: it's not as simple as "measurement." It has to with the placing of data in context, which is a lot harder than figuring out how to count up video views. I spoke to a showrunner who talked about the frustration of having a show that's good, that everybody thinks is good, that is never mentioned without the parenthetical that it is ratings-challenged or little-watched. And very often, those perceptions come from initial overnight ratings.

But what if they didn't? What if the ratings were perfectly accurate and complete, and your show was little-watched or ratings-challenged? When movies are discussed in terms of their quality, there is no expectation that you always mention their low box office, except perhaps in the case of high-budget intended blockbusters.

Creative and economic success have been uncoupled in critical discussions of film (and music and books) to a greater degree than in television. That's in part because shows are ongoing business concerns with futures to consider, but it's also in part because television's populist reputation and history has created an environment in which, if you are not being widely seen, there is a perception that you are failing in whatever your project is. Which, from an economic standpoint, if you are on a broadcast network in particular, you are. But which, from a creative standpoint, you are not, necessarily. (Consider the fact that in film, people who analyze box office and people who act as critics are mostly different people; in television, they're often the same hybrid critic/reporters, only some of whom have a strong background in ratings and scheduling and such.) It's not that people don't separate good from popular, but there's always that "struggling"/"cult" caveat, more than in other fields.

Nina Tassler of CBS talked in her executive session about what the network's job is, and this is what she said: "We are still broadcasters. We're still looking [at] No. 1, are we entertaining the greatest number of people, and are we making the most amount of money doing that? Those are the two boxes we have to check." She still talked about trying to make great content, she still talked about how great some of their shows (like The Good Wife) are. But she was straightforward about it: the most people, the most money. So if your show is not making the most money by appealing to the most people, your show is not succeeding as a business concern. But I think writing about television is perhaps more likely than writing about other creative fields to surround projects with a stench of general failure (or irrelevance) based on instant popularity or the lack thereof, which doesn't follow logically.

All these folks phrased their objections to the way ratings are being reported as issues of accuracy: overnight ratings are terribly incomplete, they argued. The subtext, of course, feels completely self-interested: overnight ratings make things look like they're being watched by fewer people than they are. But the actual lesson felt a little more nuanced: it's not just what the numbers are, but what the numbers communicate, that's gotten progressively foggier. The economic value proposition has very much come unglued from sheer viewer counts on Showtime; it's even shaky on FX, where there is ad support to consider but also the degree to which your viewers consider your network an essential part of their cable package. Consider what's happened when networks face off with cable companies over carriage deals — the network needs you to not just like their shows, but love their shows.

It's not just that we don't know what the real audience size is (though we don't). It's also that it wouldn't entirely be clear yet, to anybody, what it would mean if we did.

When most people hear about NPR's Book Your Trip series (about transit-themed summer reading) they suggest book titles. But when movie critic Bob Mondello heard about it, he started humming show tunes. And that's what you'll be doing too, after you listen to this story about "trip" musicals — shows that transport you by car, boat, train, plane or surrey with a fringe on top. Click the listen link at the top of this page, and then watch the musical numbers below. Enjoy the journey!

Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, is concerned about issues of access to affordable education, availability of job training and prospects for economic mobility. While shunning the "income inequality" language of the left, he insists that those problems need to be viewed through the lens of limited government.

"At its core, conservatism is not an anti-government movement, and it's not a no-government movement," Rubio tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in the first of a two-part interview today.

"The conservative movement is about government playing its important yet limited role, and about not falling into the trap of believing that every problem has an exclusive government answer for it," the Florida Republican says.

Just last week, Rubio, 43, co-sponsored a bill with Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner to set up a system for federal student loan repayment based on a borrower's income.

While many conservatives argue that federal aid perpetuates dependency, others, such as Rubio, want to help struggling families without disowning their core ideology.

In May, for example, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another possible 2016 candidate, warned against an economy where some people are permanently on top and others stuck at the bottom. While he offered no rhetoric about "the 1 percent," Bush was referencing some of the same underlying concerns.

Rubio steers away from criticizing unequal incomes, preferring instead to focus on unequal opportunity. "If you're the cashier at Burger King, of course you make less than the manager or even the CEO," Rubio tells NPR. "The issue is whether you're stuck being a cashier for the rest of your life.

"So, what we need to do is figure out, what is it that's holding people back? And try to do what we can to address it within the confines of what limited government should be doing," he says.

Take a single mother with two children who's struggling to support her family on $10 an hour: "[There] are things that government can do to incentivize the creation of innovations in education that are accessible to people like [her], because if you have to work full time and raise a family, you can't just drop everything and go into a traditional four-year college program," he says.

"There are things that government can do through our tax code to allow you to keep more of the money that you make, particularly when you look at the cost of child care," he says.

Asked why he specifically mentions single mothers, Rubio responds, "Because I know a bunch of them."

"There are millions of women who are trapped in lower-paying jobs and don't have the skills for a higher-paying job, and don't have the money or the time to access the higher education that they need for a better job," he says.

"So, for the rest of their lives, they're stuck making $10 an hour, and their kids, as a result, don't have opportunities either," Rubio says.

Many conservatives see government support as only reinforcing a dependency and incentivizing the father's absence. Rubio, however, insists that often it's not the mother's fault. "The man has abandoned her, or he was abusive."

"The success sequence in America says you get an education, you get a good job, you get married, you have children," Rubio says. "People who do those four things have an incredible level of economic stability.

"But there are millions of people who aren't going to have one or any of those things," he says. "They are not going to have an equal opportunity to succeed unless something happens to equalize the situation.

"The question for those of us in public policy is: What can a limited government do to become a part of that solution — not the exclusive solution — but a part of that solution?" Rubio contends.

"People should be allowed to package learning no matter how they acquired it," he says. "Their life experience, their work experience, free online courses, one course at a community college, another at another community college — you should be able to package all that cumulative learning into the equivalent of a degree that allows you to be employed."

In the second part of our conversation with Rubio, on Tuesday's Morning Edition, we'll hear from him about immigration and his presidential ambitions.

Twenty-year-old Taneka Armstrong wants to land a high-tech job, but her day starts at Taco Bell.

Armstrong stands behind a steel counter, making Burrito Supremes and ringing up customers. She counts pennies and quarters. She also gets orders from her bosses, who she says can be pretty condescending.

"They're just like, 'Oh, did you know that already?' Or, 'Can you do this?' " she says. "Yes, I've been doing it, for almost a year now."

Armstrong is a native of Oakland, Calif., next door to Silicon Valley, and she lives two lives. This first one, which starts as early as 5 a.m., doesn't challenge her or pay well. And that's why she set off in search of life No. 2: learning tech skills.

That's not an easy path, though. Technology companies have a problem when it comes to employee diversity. The workforce at places like Google and Facebook is overwhelmingly white and male.

To counter that, a growing number of nonprofits are popping up in Oakland to help young blacks and Latinos break into the industry.

The Goal Is Exposure

Every afternoon this summer, Armstrong is in the offices of a small nonprofit called Hack the Hood. Her job is to fix websites for clients.

"I'm trying to do an outline," she says, staring at a page on her laptop that has a lot of links. "You click on it, it takes you everywhere in the world. I like short and simple."

Young Americans Struggle For Jobs

Young Americans Struggle For Jobs

A 'Lost Generation Of Workers': The Cost Of Youth Unemployment

At least 47 people have been killed in fighting over the past 24 hours between rival Libyan militias battling for control of Tripoli's international airport.

The country's health ministry said late Sunday that the fighting wounded 120 people. The Associated Press reports:

"The weeklong battle over the airport is being waged by a powerful militia from the western city of Zintan, which controls the facility, and Islamist-led militias, including fighters from Misrata, east of Tripoli. The clashes resumed Sunday after cease-fire efforts failed.

"Television footage broadcast Sunday showed a mortar shell striking a Libyan Arab Airlines plane and a column of black smoke billowing from inside the airport, which has been closed since last Monday."

When is it OK for an American company to avoid paying American taxes?

That's the question the Senate Finance Committee will wrestle with next week as the Obama administration urges lawmakers to make it harder for companies to duck corporate taxes by setting up shop overseas.

The latest tax-cutting strategy to go under the microscope, these so-called corporate inversions are a buttoned-down variation of an older, sexier tax dodge called the "naked inversion."

"The naked inversion is, you're a U.S. company and you just move to Bermuda and become a Bermuda company," explained Eric Toder of the Tax Policy Center. He said U.S. authorities have cracked down on that technique, but companies still have opportunities to cut their tax bills through a more elaborate corporate maneuver.

"You have to find a partner in Ireland or some other low-tax country," he said. "And so you buy them or they buy you, you combine, and then the new company becomes a resident of whatever country it is you want to move to."

That company can then take advantage of its new "home" country's lower tax rate, even if most of its operations are still in the United States.

This week, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked congressional tax writers to rein in that kind of tax avoidance.

"We should have some economic patriotism here," he said at the Delivering Alpha hedge fund conference. "It's not right to take an American firm, to benefit from all of the things that we do in the United States to make it a safe place to do business, but then to say, 'I don't want to pay taxes here,' to shift my corporate address overseas, to pay lower taxes or no taxes."

Lew acknowledged that the overall corporate tax code is in need of a rewrite. But in the meantime, he urged lawmakers to clamp down on inversions.

"We cannot afford to wait," he said. "We need to send a signal that if we can't get comprehensive business tax reform done, we need to act on this question of inversions, and we need to do it now, and we need to do it retroactively, so that businesses don't rush to do these transactions."

Companies are already rushing to hook up with foreign firms in search of tax savings, with more than a dozen big inversion deals announced so far this year. On Monday, the generic drugmaker Mylan, based in Pennsylvania, announced a $5.3 billion merger with parts of Abbott Laboratories, with the new company to be based in the Netherlands.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch told CNBC the deal makes sense even without the tax advantage. But Bresch, who is the daughter of West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, bristled at what she called the "politically charged" idea of limiting such corporate escapes.

"If we want to sit here and have a discussion about how do we handcuff U.S. corporations to the United States, I think that's unpractical and quite frankly ridiculous," she said. "We need to be talking about as a country, how do we make this country globally competitive again?"

Republicans in both the House and the Senate agree that what the U.S. really needs is a competitive tax code for all companies. But as Toder noted, recent efforts to rewrite it haven't gotten very far.

"As far as the prospects of such legislation in this environment, I think they're not very good," he said.

Toder also questioned the administration's call for "economic patriotism" — a term with a "quaint" ring to it, he said, in today's globalized economy.

"Companies have production everywhere, they have customers everywhere, they have shareholders everywhere," he said. "What makes them a U.S. company? The residence label is much less meaningful than it used to be."

The administration argues that companies that benefit from government research, patent protection, and infrastructure should be willing to help pay for it. The White House says in the coming weeks, President Obama will keep pushing his vision of what it means to be an American corporate citizen

An appeals court in Italy has overturned the conviction of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on charges that he paid for sex with an underage prostitute and then abused his power to cover up the crime.

The Milan court unexpectedly threw out last year's verdict against the billionaire politician, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. Prosecutors are expected to appeal the decision to Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, with a likely decision sometime next year.

Reuters says: "Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with former nightclub dancer Charisma El Mahout, better known under her stage name 'Ruby the Heart stealer,' when she was under 18, and of abusing his authority to get her released from police custody over unrelated theft accusations."

The Wall Street Journal adds: "Mr. Berlusconi, who was also banned from public office and ousted from Italy's Senate as a result of the tax fraud conviction, has always denied the charges in the sex case, which dates back to May 2010."

As we reported in a profile of Berlusconi when he left office in 2011, many politicians inside and outside of Italy were eager to see the controversial leader exit. However, his numerous court cases have continued to follow him. Last year, a five-judge panel of the Court of Cassation rejected Berlusconi's appeal of the tax fraud conviction, prompting celebrations on the streets of Rome.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, is concerned about issues of access to affordable education, availability of job training and prospects for economic mobility. While shunning the "income inequality" language of the left, he insists that those problems need to be viewed through the lens of limited government.

"At its core, conservatism is not an anti-government movement, and it's not a no-government movement," Rubio tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in the first of a two-part interview today.

"The conservative movement is about government playing its important, yet limited role, and about not falling into the trap of believing that every problem has an exclusive government answer for it," the Florida Republican says.

Just last week, Rubio, 43, co-sponsored a bill with Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner to set up a system for federal student loan repayment based on a borrower's income.

While many conservatives argue that federal aid perpetuates dependency, others, such as Rubio, want to help struggling families without disowning their core ideology.

In May, for example, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another possible 2016 candidate, warned against an economy where some people are permanently on top and others stuck at the bottom. While he offered no rhetoric about "the 1 percent," Bush was referencing some of the same underlying concerns.

Rubio steers away from criticizing unequal incomes, preferring instead to focus on unequal opportunity. "If you're the cashier at Burger King, of course you make less than the manager or even the CEO," Rubio tells NPR. "The issue is whether you're stuck being a cashier for the rest of your life.

"So, what we need to do is figure out, what is it that's holding people back? And try to do what we can to address it within the confines of what limited government should be doing," he says.

Take a single mother with two children who's struggling to support her family on $10 an hour: "[There] are things that government can do to incentivize the creation of innovations in education that are accessible to people like [her], because if you have to work full time and raise a family, you can't just drop everything and go into a traditional four-year college program," he says.

"There are things that government can do through our tax code to allow you to keep more of the money that you make, particularly when you look at the cost of child care," he says.

Asked why he specifically mentions single mothers, Rubio responds, "Because I know a bunch of them."

"There are millions of women who are trapped in lower-paying jobs and don't have the skills for a higher-paying job, and don't have the money or the time to access the higher education that they need for a better job," he says.

"So, for the rest of their lives, they're stuck making $10 an hour, and their kids, as a result, don't have opportunities either," Rubio says.

Many conservatives see government support as only reinforcing a dependency and incentivizing the father's absence. Rubio, however, insists that often it's not the mother's fault. "The man has abandoned her, or he was abusive."

"The success sequence in America says you get an education, you get a good job, you get married, you have children," Rubio says. "People who do those four things have an incredible level of economic stability.

"But there are millions of people who aren't going to have one or any of those things," he says. "They are not going to have an equal opportunity to succeed unless something happens to equalize the situation.

"The question for those of us in public policy is: What can a limited government do to become a part of that solution — not the exclusive solution — but a part of that solution?" Rubio contends.

"People should be allowed to package learning no matter how they acquired it," he says. "Their life experience, their work experience, free online courses, one course at a community college, another at another community college — you should be able to package all that cumulative learning into the equivalent of a degree that allows you to be employed."

In the second part of our conversation with the Florida Republican on Tuesday's Morning Edition, we'll hear from Sen. Rubio about immigration and his presidential ambitions.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, is concerned about issues of access to affordable education, availability of job training and prospects for economic mobility. While shunning the "income inequality" language of the left, he insists that those problems need to be viewed through the lens of limited government.

"At its core, conservatism is not an anti-government movement, and it's not a no-government movement," Rubio tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in the first of a two-part interview today.

"The conservative movement is about government playing its important, yet limited role, and about not falling into the trap of believing that every problem has an exclusive government answer for it," the Florida Republican says.

Just last week, Rubio, 43, co-sponsored a bill with Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner to set up a system for federal student loan repayment based on a borrower's income.

While many conservatives argue that federal aid perpetuates dependency, others, such as Rubio, want to help struggling families without disowning their core ideology.

In May, for example, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, another possible 2016 candidate, warned against an economy where some people are permanently on top and others stuck at the bottom. While he offered no rhetoric about "the 1 percent," Bush was referencing some of the same underlying concerns.

Rubio steers away from criticizing unequal incomes, preferring instead to focus on unequal opportunity. "If you're the cashier at Burger King, of course you make less than the manager or even the CEO," Rubio tells NPR. "The issue is whether you're stuck being a cashier for the rest of your life.

"So, what we need to do is figure out, what is it that's holding people back? And try to do what we can to address it within the confines of what limited government should be doing," he says.

Take a single mother with two children who's struggling to support her family on $10 an hour: "[There] are things that government can do to incentivize the creation of innovations in education that are accessible to people like [her], because if you have to work full time and raise a family, you can't just drop everything and go into a traditional four-year college program," he says.

"There are things that government can do through our tax code to allow you to keep more of the money that you make, particularly when you look at the cost of child care," he says.

Asked why he specifically mentions single mothers, Rubio responds, "Because I know a bunch of them."

"There are millions of women who are trapped in lower-paying jobs and don't have the skills for a higher-paying job, and don't have the money or the time to access the higher education that they need for a better job," he says.

"So, for the rest of their lives, they're stuck making $10 an hour, and their kids, as a result, don't have opportunities either," Rubio says.

Many conservatives see government support as only reinforcing a dependency and incentivizing the father's absence. Rubio, however, insists that often it's not the mother's fault. "The man has abandoned her, or he was abusive."

"The success sequence in America says you get an education, you get a good job, you get married, you have children," Rubio says. "People who do those four things have an incredible level of economic stability.

"But there are millions of people who aren't going to have one or any of those things," he says. "They are not going to have an equal opportunity to succeed unless something happens to equalize the situation.

"The question for those of us in public policy is: What can a limited government do to become a part of that solution — not the exclusive solution — but a part of that solution?" Rubio contends.

"People should be allowed to package learning no matter how they acquired it," he says. "Their life experience, their work experience, free online courses, one course at a community college, another at another community college — you should be able to package all that cumulative learning into the equivalent of a degree that allows you to be employed."

In the second part of our conversation with the Florida Republican on Tuesday's Morning Edition, we'll hear from Sen. Rubio about immigration and his presidential ambitions.

The annual progressive gathering known as Netroots Nation wraps up its annual conference in Detroit this weekend.

In the hallways and the meeting rooms, much of the buzz was about the presidential race in 2016 — and who might run on the Democratic side.

But Vice President Joe Biden, who gave the keynote address on opening day, didn't factor much into that speculation, despite being President Obama's wingman on everything from the stimulus package to the Affordable Care Act.

Biden was even ahead of the administration's position on same-sex marriage.

"We literally saved this country from moving from a great recession into a depression," he said in his speech Thursday. "And we established that progressive government did and does have a role in the economic health and well being of the American people."

On foreign policy, Biden has been a key player for decades dating back to his days in the Senate — he showcased those credentials as he explained why he was late to his Netroots speech.

It turns out he was on the phone, getting details about the Malaysia Airlines plane crash from the president of Ukraine.

"I was on the phone for a better part of a half an hour with President Poroshenko, and I've been in contact with our president as well as our national security team," he said.

Biden has more than just experience. His political style is one-of-a-kind.

He's known to give it to you straight. No filler.

It's exactly what people say they want in presidential candidate. But here, among the party's progressive wing, that candidate ain't Joe Biden.

Outside the main ballroom, where Biden spoke the day before, the group Ready for Warren is hard at work. They are passing out hats and signs trying to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a White House run.

Another group that backs former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a party last night.

There was nothing like that for Biden.

Gabriela Lemus says she's been working in the progressive movement for years. She talks of the vice president almost like they are related.

"Uncle Joe ... yeah. That's what we lovingly call him," she said. "He's our uncle. I look at it from a familial term. Like he's part of the family, you know."

Lemus says Biden's been a good adviser to the president. But she admits that as a potential candidate, Biden just isn't resonating with her.

"Maybe sometimes if it's too familiar, you kind of overlook it even if it is the right person," she said.

That's not the case for Rick Massell. He says there are many reasons why Biden shouldn't be the party's nominee in 2016.

The main reason? Too many gaffes, he says.

"Maybe I'm being too hard on the guy, maybe it does make him more human and maybe we should have someone that is more human, but he also misspeaks a lot. I don't know if you can ever overcome that," said Massell.

Sandra Kurtz, on the other hand, says she's glad the vice president came to Netroots.

Kurtz says he's got the right experience on both foreign and domestic issues but she's just not quite sure what to make of a potential Biden run. And then it hits her — she's got the perfect job for him.

"For Joe? I don't know, I'd personally like to see him as VP for life, but that's just me," she laughs.

The election is still a long way off. The vice president hasn't announced any plans for 2016 just yet.

But if Biden is doing his due diligence — kicking the tires on what would be his third run at the White House — he's still got quite a bit of work to do to excite the Democrat base.

An appeals court in Italy has overturned the conviction of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on charges that he paid for sex with an underage prostitute and then abused his power to cover up the crime.

The Milan court unexpectedly threw out last year's verdict against the billionaire politician, who was sentenced to seven years in prison. Prosecutors are expected to appeal the decision to Italy's highest court, the Court of Cassation, with a likely decision sometime next year.

Reuters says: "Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with former nightclub dancer Charisma El Mahout, better known under her stage name 'Ruby the Heart stealer,' when she was under 18, and of abusing his authority to get her released from police custody over unrelated theft accusations."

The Wall Street Journal adds: "Mr. Berlusconi, who was also banned from public office and ousted from Italy's Senate as a result of the tax fraud conviction, has always denied the charges in the sex case, which dates back to May 2010."

As we reported in a profile of Berlusconi when he left office in 2011, many politicians inside and outside of Italy were eager to see the controversial leader exit. However, his numerous court cases have continued to follow him. Last year, a five-judge panel of the Court of Cassation rejected Berlusconi's appeal of the tax fraud conviction, prompting celebrations on the streets of Rome.