PREVIOUS IDEAS FEATURES
The surprising persistence of Chinese communism
ARRIVING IN CHINA last week as part of his multi-country Asia trip, President Barack Obama echoed many of the same themes as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George H.W. Bush before him. He saluted China’s ancient and dynamic culture, touted the intricate links between American and Chinese businesses, and vowed that Washington and Beijing would work to prevent any ... (Boston Globe, 11/20/09)
Brainiac: The indefensible Aztek
IF YOU HAD to come up with a parody of a contrarian story - “Turn that conventional wisdom right on its head! Zig when the others zag!” - you could not do better than this teaser from Slate: “How the Reviled Aztek Could Save GM.” (Boston Globe, 11/20/09)
Alternate endings: What if the world doesn’t end in 2012?
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ll be aware of the doomsday scenarios associated with Dec. 21, 2012. Or maybe you’ve been living in a cave because of these scenarios. Either way, according to an ever-widening circle of believers, the world is coming to an end on precisely that date. We know this because the Mayans told us, sort ... (Boston Globe, 11/20/09)
The Word: When to ‘whoomp’
WHO WOULD HAVE thought, with the old media giants keeling over like Disney’s overheated dinosaurs, that a journalistic inside joke would become the talk of the twitterverse? But so it is. A month after the Fake AP Stylebook began tweeting parody usage and style tips - “ ‘Teaspoon’ and ‘tablespoon’ measure volume. ‘Coffee spoon’ measures life” - it has thousands ... (Boston Globe, 11/20/09)
Squaresville, USA: How to fix American politics, one right angle at a time
WATCHING THE TEABAGGERS’ march on Washington earlier this month, it was hard not to find oneself wondering exactly what kind of district could be responsible for the manufacture of Representative Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Akin, among whose signature legislative items is something called the “Pledge Protection Act,” took the dais to lead the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance. “Let us ... (Boston Globe, 11/20/09)
What does it take to save a species? Sometimes, high-voltage power wires
FOR DECADES, NOBODY in the US had seen the bee. The silver-haired black Epeoloides pilosula was once widespread in New England, often found where native yellow loosestrife plants grew. But as the region’s pastoral landscapes gave way to forests, the bee lost its sunny open home. In 1927 it was spotted in a Needham meadow and then, despite years of ... (Globe Staff, 11/20/09)
Judging a book’s cover
An exhibition based on “50 books/50 covers,” an award sponsored by AIGA, the professional association for design, was part of the association’s annual conference last month in Memphis. The books represent the association’s picks for the best-designed of 2008. (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
The Freakonomics duo tackles climate change -- and discovers the limits of cleverness
Four years ago, “Freakonomics” took the reading world by storm. Co-written by the acclaimed economist Steven Levitt and the journalist Stephen Dubner, the book pulled off the unlikely coup of recasting economics, the theretofore dismal science, as a tool for cerebral swashbucklers. The writers explored the finances of drug dealers, the workings of the Ku Klux Klan, the incidence of ... (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
When the CIA tried its hand at magic
What goes on in the shadows? First, consider what’s happening in the foreground. “The instant the performer sees the spectator take a cigarette, cigar, or pipe, he takes the packet of matches from his pocket, tears off one match, and holds packet and match ready to ignite the match,” the magician John Mulholland wrote in a manual in the 1950s. ... (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
The rules
It’s nearly impossible to go through school in the United States without learning, at some point, the spelling mnemonic “i before e, except after c.” Generations of children have recited this under their breath during spelling bees and tests, clutching it like drowning victims to a lifeline, trusting it to save them. (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
A way to improve schools, one instructor at a time
A good teacher equals a good school year. Not always, but far more often than not. Ask any parents of an elementary-grade child how the school year is going, and it won’t be long before you’ll hear them rave about - or bemoan - the teacher their child has been assigned to. There are teachers who are duds, who can ... (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
The pleasure of pursuing
Traditionally, men are expected to seduce women, while women are expected to be demure and picky. Thus, women “play hard to get,” while men “sow their wild oats.” However, a new study suggests that this disparity in mating standards is more tenuous than you might expect. Several hundred college students participated in a speed-dating experiment. In some sessions, the men ... (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
The A team
Two years ago, a former Worcester middle school teacher launched a small Boston nonprofit aimed at bringing excellent teachers to urban schools. Celine Coggins recruited a cohort of “teaching policy fellows” from the ranks of young teachers in local urban systems. The group met one evening a month for a year and a half, reviewing research on teacher policies, hearing ... (Boston Globe, 10/30/09)
Lévi-Strauss, the total anthropologist
CLAUDE LéVI-STRAUSS, who died on Oct. 30, age 100, was an extraordinarily influential figure in France by the early 1960s, but “hardly known in this country,” according to a young Susan Sontag. Sontag, therefore, took it upon herself to hail him in a 1963 essay, published in the New York Review of Books, that helped to broaden his reputation. It ... (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
Q&A: Author Allison Hoover Bartlett on the curious psyche of a rare-book thief
Rare books provoke passion in collectors, who expend untold time and treasure in their pursuit. Some surrender their scruples, too. (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
The Word: Can you relate?
“RELATABLE - WHAT IS that?” demanded the subject line of Christina Thompson’s e-mail. The message itself took a calmer tone. Thompson, who edits the Harvard Review and teaches writing and editing, has been hearing the word more and more often, she said, to describe “something one can relate to, as in ‘it’s a very relatable book.’ (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
Let us now praise. . . Laughing babies
IN THE MATTER of forwarded Internet tidbits, I am, I’m afraid, reliably ungracious. Send me a link to something pertinent, shocking, or just plain LOL-hilarious that you’ve come across in the course of your 2.25 hours of daily Web-noodling, and I’ll ignore it. I don’t care if it’s the cleverest blog post ever, or footage of two polar bears in ... (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
We not-so-few. . . What did Henry V really say at Agincourt?
When it comes to eating, drinking, thinking, dressing, and having sex, the French are generally held to be a notch or two above their English rivals. Fighting, however, is another matter. For centuries, the English have met France’s hoity-toity, classier-than-thou attitude with a default response: our country can beat up your country. (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
Why fundamentalism will fail
IN 1910, A COHORT of ultra-conservative American Protestants drew up a list of non-negotiable beliefs they insisted any genuine Christian must subscribe to. They published these “fundamentals” in a series of widely distributed pamphlets over the next five years. Their catalog featured doctrines such as the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Christ, and his imminent second coming. The cornerstone, ... (Boston Globe, 11/6/09)
The un-welcome
There’s a certain kind of person - you may even be this kind of person - whose good will after receiving a favor and replying with “thank you” is completely wiped out when the response is not the traditional “you’re welcome,” but instead the breezier “no problem.” (Boston Globe, 11/27/09)
The power of positive deviants
In 2001, Muhammad Shafique arrived in the Haripur District in Pakistan, a region known for its traditionalism and wariness of outsiders. As part of a team from Save the Children, Shafique was seeking to improve outcomes for newborns. Immediate breast-feeding is recommended for babies, but infants in the region were typically fed ghutti, an herbal mixture, before nursing. By tradition, ... (Boston Globe, 11/27/09)
Better to give nothing
Each year between Halloween and Christmas we are barraged with reports taking the economy’s pulse based on holiday spending. Are we spending enough to stimulate the economy? Are we on track to beat last year’s numbers? And, indeed, holiday spending is important for retailers, many of whom sustain themselves on activity between the goblins’ departure and Santa’s arrival. While December ... (Boston Globe, 11/27/09)
When the glacier left
In the village of Kumik, in a remote Himalayan valley of northwest India known as Zanskar, people have an old saying, “Kha Kumik, chu Shila” - the snow falls above Kumik, but the water goes to Shila, a nearby settlement. Intoned with a rhythmic staccato, these six syllables elicit laughs of recognition from most Zanskaris. “Isn’t that life for you?” (Boston Globe, 11/27/09)
Wanted: Great criminals of fiction
The Believer magazine asked the forensic artist Barbara Anderson to sketch eight literary criminals, working from descriptive details offered by their creators. In real criminal cases, observes The Believer’s Joshua Cohen, it is amazing that sketch artists like Anderson “work from so little information”: a few half-remembered glimpses from one shaken witness, perhaps. Likewise, novelists can be stinting with the ... (Boston Globe, 11/27/09)