< Back to front page Text size – +

The Week in Ideas (3/28)

Posted by Josh Rothman  March 29, 2012 11:45 AM
  • E-mail

    • E-mail this article

    Invalid E-mail address
    Invalid E-mail address

    Sending your article

    Your article has been sent.

E-mail this article

Invalid email address
Invalid email address

Sending your article

Your article has been sent.

The truth about the 'code of the street.' Does it really exist? Leon Neyfakh discovers the (sad?) truth: "Insofar as there ever was such a code... it has largely crumpled since the late 1980s, as gangs have grown smaller, younger, and more poorly organized, and increasingly harsh sentencing laws have made it more difficult for people to withstand the pressure to snitch on their associates to avoid prison time. The street rules that exist, experts say, vary from gang to gang and city to city, and most importantly, they are often ignored."

Does financial aid make college more expensive? Paul Kix explains why it might be a major culprit behind the dramatic rise in tuitions. A "recent paper, by economists at Harvard and George Washington University, compared more than 2,650 programs within for-profit schools in three states over multiple years, and found that the schools receiving federal grants and loans set their tuition roughly 75 percent higher than those institutions that go without government support. This discrepancy in costs has everything to do, the authors write in the study, with the aid the schools receive."

What Anne Sexton told her psychiatrist: Ruth Graham talks to literary critic Dawn Skorczewski, who's written a book connecting Sexton's therapy tapes with her poetry. "The therapy helped her become a much better poet than she would have been otherwise."

Plus: Ben Zimmer on how baseball gave us the word jazz, and Kevin Lewis on why it's hard to remember the people you wrestle.

  • E-mail

    • E-mail this article

    Invalid E-mail address
    Invalid E-mail address

    Sending your article

    Your article has been sent.

« Back to front page
About brainiac Brainiac is the daily blog of the Globe's Sunday Ideas section, covering news and delights from the worlds of art, science, literature, history, design, and more. You can follow us on Twitter @GlobeIdeas.
see all globe blogs
contributors
Leon Neyfakh is the staff writer for Ideas. Amanda Katz is the deputy Ideas editor. Stephen Heuser is the Ideas editor.

Kevin Hartnett is a writer in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His last article for Ideas was about choosing Congress by lottery.

Guest blogger Simon Waxman is Managing Editor of Boston Review and has written for WBUR, Alternet, McSweeney's, Jacobin, and others.

Guest blogger Elizabeth Manus is a writer living in New York City. She has been a book review editor at the Boston Phoenix, and a columnist for The New York Observer and Metro.

Guest blogger Sarah Laskow is a freelance writer and editor in New York City. She edits Smithsonian's SmartNews blog and has contributed to Salon, Good, The American Prospect, Bloomberg News, and other publications.

Guest blogger Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and freelance semiotician. He was the original Brainiac blogger, and is currently editor of the blog HiLobrow, publisher of a series of Radium Age science fiction novels, and co-author/co-editor of several books, including the story collection "Significant Objects" and the kids' field guide to life "Unbored."

Guest blogger Ruth Graham is a freelance journalist in New Hampshire, and a frequent Ideas contributor. She is a former features editor for the New York Sun, and has written for publications including Slate and the Wall Street Journal.

Joshua Rothman is a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the Harvard English department, and an Instructor in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He teaches novels and political writing.

archives

browse this blog

by category

related links