She's Cashing In, but Does Paula Deen Really Get the Last Laugh?
The Food Network personality and food mogul said she has no plans to change her lifestyle or the way that she cooks. Who is she kidding?… More »
Ellen Ruppel Shell is a professor and science journalist who teaches at Boston University. She is the author most recently of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. More
The Food Network personality and food mogul said she has no plans to change her lifestyle or the way that she cooks. Who is she kidding?… More »
Do young people increasingly believe that work -- or at least work for pay -- is not a source of meaning in their lives?… More »
As a case from 18th century Britain shows, subsidizing the working poor with entitlements, makes it all but impossible for them to work their way out of poverty.… More »
With jobs scarce, what's become of the concept of finding purpose in employment?… More »
The New York Times Magazine returned to over-the-hill theories about sugar this weekend, but when it came to the risks of inactivity, it got things right… More »
A shocking portrayal of the high cost of class ascendancy in industrialized China… More »
Subsidizing the high cost of healthy eating would allow more people to make the right choices… More »
Contrary to a New York Times article, there is little reliable data proving that ADHD has any effect on marriages… More »
Americans are willing to do almost anything to prevent a repeat of the BP oil fiasco -- anything, it seems, but pay more at the pump… More »
Food engineering has helped make chicken profitable, but it's immigrant labor that has kept cheap chicken possible… More »
A new Web-based tool from MIT's Media Lab traces supply chains to reveal the terrifyingly high cost of all our stuff… More »
Management consultant Charlie Barnhart deconstructs the myth of outsourcing as a silver bullet.… More »
What it means to abstain from Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, Kindles -- even just for a few hours.… More »
The food system hasn't changed all that much over the past decade, but the obesity problem has soared. What has changed is how much and how often most Americans move.… More »
An opinion piece I wrote on the tyranny of the grade point average in last Sunday's Boston Globe prompted a surprisingly supportive response, particularly from academics who agree that the over-reliance on GPA by colleges, universities, and professional schools discourages risk taking and creativity, and directs students toward the least challenging courses. Some carped that grade inflation was to blame, but I believe that grade inflation is the symptom--not the…… More »
Writer Jeremy Miller reminded me this morning that "we are in an unprecedented age of migration and slum building.... The U.N. projects that over the next 20 years, the world's urban population will swell from three billion to five billion people--as rural populations move with increasing rapidity into the cities of the developing world." I opine in this morning's Boston Globe that Haiti's most recent calamity underscores the high cost of this desperate stampede...…… More »
The U.N. Climate Conference in Copenhagen was characterized by the Guardian as a "sad tribute to collective failure." The Guardian also pointed out that Obama's castigation of China sidestepped the reality that "much of China's emissions are incurred in serving western consumers." Put another way: global environmental devastation is to some degree powered by our demand for cheap goods, the cost of which are largely externalized. In their astonishing new…… More »
Spiegel Online International reports this week of a shocking tell-all penned by IKEA managing director Johan Stenebo. I investigate IKEA in detail in my new book, CHEAP:The High Cost of Discount Culture, and I'm delighted to see a former IKEA executive coming clean on the company's questionable business practices. Stenebo, a 20 year veteran of the company, headed up IKEA's GreenTech division and had quit thanks to what he describes as a crisis of conscience.…… More »
Contrary to what we're so often told, American students are not bad at math and science.The John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development published a study not long ago that concluded that, contrary to fears expressed by educators and potential employers, American students have not wavered in their interest in science and math over the past 30 years. But, the study also found that many of the highest performing students were choosing non-science and math…… More »
In Wednesday's New York Times, Tom Friedman posited (yet again) that Americans are losing ground because we are lazy, passive, and/or just plan ignorant. As is his custom he begins with an anecdote, a supposedly chance encounter with a one time PepsiCo and Kraft Europe executive now laboring in the stony fields of international investment. We learn nothing of this man's personal educational background or his credentials, but we do hear him warn that " education…… More »
National Portrait Gallery
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The Civil War
President Obama reflects on what Lincoln means to him and to America, in an introduction to our special issue. Read more › |
Whitney Houston Dies at 48
Romney's Good Day: Wins CPAC Poll, Maine Caucus
Supplies of Critical Child Leukemia Drug Are Almost Gone
