Archive
Try to Buy a Baloney Sandwich with That
As an old popular song asks: What do you get if you "work your fingers right down to the bone?" Boney fingers. As housekeepers in the sprawling Marriott hotel chains know, that's more than a cute lyric. It's the truth. These "room attendants," as they're called, are...
Head in the Tar Sands
Revealing Corporate Largesse
Some people have a recurring nightmare of rising to give a speech, but realizing they know nothing about the topic — and then discovering they're naked. It turns out that corporations also have such nightmares. OK, corporations aren't people, no matter what the...
In OtherWords: October 1, 2014
This week in OtherWords, Ryan Alexander questions the wisdom of spending $1.5 trillion on F-35 combat jets and Jill Richardson urges everyone to get hooked on apples. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss the latest from OtherWords? Subscribe to our free weekly...
We Can’t Go On Eating Like This
Once the human race stopped throwing spears and gathering berries, our bodies suffered. Planting seeds and harvesting produce made leisure possible, but it also meant we grew shorter, fatter, sicker, and considerably more overworked. An alien visiting from another...
When $1.5 Trillion Could Be Too Low, the Price Tag Is Too High
It's not yet clear exactly how much the Pentagon's fancy new F-35 combat jet will cost or when any of these stealth fighters will become operational. But the F-35 already shows great promise in the tough competition to become the most expensive weapons program ever...
Hooked on Apples
When it comes to solving big problems, I believe in reaching for the low-hanging fruit first. What's the easy stuff we can get out of the way before working on harder challenges? Right now, many of us can go for the low hanging-fruit in a very literal way: by visiting...
We’re All in This Together
Lolita Lledo spends all day talking on her cell phone, texting, and checking her Facebook page, though not for the reasons you might think. As the associate director of the Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles, she relies on social networking to keep in touch with...
Snooping on Everyone While the Big Box Thieves Get Busy
In a more innocent time not so long ago, perhaps only a million or so people in this country fell under the government's suspecting glare. Achieving that distinctively fat FBI file might have required marching against a war or traveling to leftist lands. These days,...
The Nouveau Sodbusters
We know from the childhood song that Old MacDonald had a farm. But e-i-e-i-o — look who's got his farm now. It's outfits like American Farmland, Farmland Partners, and BlackRock. These aren't dirt farmers wearing overalls and muddy boots. They're Wall Street hucksters...
