The New Geopolitics of Food

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we’ve seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet’s poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute — and it has — to revolutions and upheaval.

Source: Foreign Policy
Published: Apr 26, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,048 words)

Cranking

Anyhow, this has been my on-and-off job for the past two years. I type. And, I try to type things that will help and comfort people, but mostly I try to type things that will please my editor. Who is awesome. Sometimes I do my job at 6:00 AM Pacific Time. Sometimes I do my job at 5:30 PM or 11:30 AM or really any time in between. Sometimes I do my job while my family goes to birthday parties and holiday dinners and a couple vacations and I don’t even know how many (non-Shakey’s) pizza nights–all without me. Without Dad.

Source: 43 Folders
Published: Apr 22, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,068 words)

Almost Amis

And so Martin Amis and his wife, the author Isabel Fonseca, are coming to Cobble Hill. And what’s it like being a writer in Brooklyn? “I expect it’s like writing in Manhattan,” Colson Whitehead once wrote in The New York Times, “but there aren’t as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee.” More likely, there are other writers walking in front of you. It’s a zone of infestation. Not only of novelists but reporters, pundits, poets and those often closeted scribblers who call themselves editors and agents. Not to mention bloggers, or whatever counts for being an online writer these days.

Published: Apr 26, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,132 words)

Bad Education

Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that in number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined.

Source: n+1
Published: Apr 25, 2011
Length: 11 minutes (2,969 words)

Save the Poor by Selling Them Stuff — Cheap

The Extreme Affordability program is an experiment with a dramatically different approach to fighting poverty, one that in recent years has generated tremendous buzz among academics, development workers, entrepreneurs and corporate executives. It’s called “bottom of the pyramid” marketing. The idea is to harness capitalism to solve the problems of the world’s poorest — those at the bottom of the global economic pyramid.

Source: Miller-McCune
Published: Apr 26, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,167 words)

Before Manny Became Manny

Hero. Cheat. Prodigy. Ingrate. Free spirit. Knucklehead. Hall of Famer. Pariah. Enigma. Manny Ramirez, one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation, who retired from baseball this month after once again testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, was many things to many people — fans and family and teammates from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to Cleveland to Boston. Sara Rimer, then a reporter for The New York Times, met Ramirez in 1991 at George Washington High School in Manhattan. Over two decades, she enjoyed a memorable and mystifying acquaintanceship with Ramirez.

Author: Sara Rimer
Published: Apr 26, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,181 words)

Bad Credit: How Payday Lenders Evade Regulation

The industry is moving fast to adapt to the changing regulatory climate—and watchdogs warn that state lawmakers and regulators may be surprised to see the same payday products under different names. “Pretty much any state that tries to get at the bottom line of payday lenders, we see some attempt at subterfuge,” says Sara Weed, co-author of a Center for Responsible Lending report on how payday firms evade state regulations. “Our approach is to continue to work with policymakers and grassroots organizations to provide a predictable and favorable legislative environment,” Advance America’s latest investor report explains.

Author: Kai Wright
Source: The Nation
Published: Apr 11, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,528 words)

Unlocking the Mystery of Paris’ Secret Underground Society

On August 23, 2004, they discovered a cinema 60 feet beneath Paris. The sun was shining on the Trocadéro, the Eiffel Tower gleamed across the Seine, and deep belowground, police came across a sign. The officers were on a training mission, exploring the 4.3 miles of catacombs that twist beneath the 16 th arrondissement. The former quarries are centuries-old, illegal to enter, and the sign at the mouth of the tunnel read, “No public entry.” Police are not the public; they entered. … They found 3,000 square feet of subterranean galleries, strung with lights, wired for phones, live with pirated electricity. The officers uncovered a bar, lounge, workshop, dining corner and small screening area. The cinema’s seats had been carved into the stone itself, with room for 20 people to sit in the cool and chomp on popcorn.

Source: Brick
Published: Apr 25, 2011
Length: 32 minutes (8,194 words)

Rude Boys

On the 25th anniversary of “Licensed to Ill,” an oral history of the birth of the Beastie Boys. “Then we were like, ‘Oh, shit, we should get a D.J.! Like rap groups. They have a D.J.!’ Nick Cooper knew about this guy Rick Rubin who went to NYU and would throw parties and had turntables. And a bubble machine. We were like, ‘If we had a fucking D.J. and a fucking bubble machine, we’d be fucking killing it.'”

Published: Apr 24, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,516 words)

Welcome to the Firm

On Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, and the state of the British monarchy. “Only churls will do anything other than look indulgently on their happiness. But since 1981 we should all have learnt much that eluded Diana and Cinderella. Being a princess is no fairytale; it may not even involve love. It is assumed this bride will one day be queen (as we assumed about Diana). But even if the best comes to the best, she faces a life in which her privileges will be balanced, and probably outweighed, by duty, constraint and the sheer embuggerance of it all. We can only hope the palace has learnt enough to give Kate the support that was denied to the mother-in-law she never knew. Britain is now, however, a very different country.”

Source: Financial Times
Published: Apr 23, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,121 words)