Can One Chef Take Finnish Food From 'Worst in the World' to Gourmet?
Sasu Laukkonen is trying to revolutionize a food culture that has long emphasized sour rye bread, root vegetables, and gruel.… 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
Sasu Laukkonen is trying to revolutionize a food culture that has long emphasized sour rye bread, root vegetables, and gruel.… 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 »
Reflections from 20 Years of 'The Real World'
DEA Agents Now in a Whole New Colombian Prostitution Scandal
The Reasons Obama Is Doubling Down on Bain Capital Attacks Against Romney
Trade in your mobile for cash. Compare offers for your unwanted phones at flogmyphone.co.uk
