Boston Globe -- Ideas section

The un-welcome

Erin McKean — 2009-11-27T15:41:33Z

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.”

Better to give nothing

Joel Waldfogel — 2009-11-27T15:39:59Z

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 ...

The power of positive deviants

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow — 2009-11-27T15:35:43Z

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, ...

When the glacier left

Jonathan Mingle — 2009-11-27T14:29:03Z

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?”

Satan, the great motivator

Michael Fitzgerald — 2009-11-22T05:01:17Z

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

The indefensible Aztek

Christopher Shea — 2009-11-20T19:40:51Z

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.”

Alternate endings

Chris Wright — 2009-11-20T19:37:33Z

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 ...

When to ‘whoomp’

Jan Freeman — 2009-11-20T19:35:17Z

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 ...

Squaresville, USA

Joe Keohane — 2009-11-20T19:32:41Z

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 ...

Nonstop party

Joshua Kurlantzick — 2009-11-20T19:29:29Z

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 ...

Green lines

Beth Daley, Globe Staff — 2009-11-20T19:25:51Z

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 ...

Flattery will get you somewhere

Kevin Lewis — 2009-11-13T19:54:04Z

Insincere flattery gets a bad rap. Sure, it sounds cheesy or even awkward. But new research suggests that one’s initial conscious reaction - discounting the flattery as a self-serving ploy - may mask a more durable implicit positive emotional association with the flatterer. People who were given a printed advertisement from a department store that paid compliments to their sense ...

League of nations

Samuel Arbesman — 2009-11-13T19:52:41Z

With the fall sports season in full swing, fans everywhere are following their fantasy teams. They have already chosen who their quarterbacks will be, decided whether or not to draft running backs in the first rounds, and determined if there is ever a good reason to choose Terrell Owens. And every week, these managers are absorbed in deciding who their ...

Phwoar!

Erin McKean — 2009-11-13T19:45:44Z

Oxford University Press has just published the third edition of “The F-Word” - 270 pages investigating every possible combination, situation, and divagation in which the most notorious expletive in English can be found. For a word that can’t be printed in most newspapers, it’s certainly leading a rich, full life.

AD:

2009-11-13T19:45:44Z

The limits of people power

Drake Bennett — 2009-11-13T19:39:27Z

With the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier this week, the news was filled with images of that epoch-ending night, and of the equally historic events that led up to and followed it. Those images, for the most part, are of crowds: strikers in Poland, the multitudes at the reburial of Hungary’s former prime minister Imre ...

The literate burglar

Matthew Battles — 2009-11-06T16:43:43Z

Rare books provoke passion in collectors, who expend untold time and treasure in their pursuit. Some surrender their scruples, too.

We not-so-few. . .

Chris Wright — 2009-11-06T16:41:14Z

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.

Why fundamentalism will fail

Harvey Cox — 2009-11-06T16:36:25Z

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, ...

Laughing babies

James Parker — 2009-11-06T16:35:51Z

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 ...

The pleasure of pursuing

Kevin Lewis — 2009-10-30T19:04:50Z

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 ...

Tinker, tailor, soldier... illusionist?

Tom Scocca — 2009-10-30T19:00:15Z

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. ...

Grade the teachers

Michael Jonas — 2009-10-30T18:57:48Z

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 ...

Sloppynomics

Drake Bennett — 2009-10-30T18:53:25Z

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 ...