September 2008

For your Labor Day weekend reading pleasure, we have crafted summaries of recent research papers focusing on unions, strikes and the attitudes of workers. Collectively a bargain, they come to you fresh off the Miller-McCune factory floor.

A call on the professorial classes to help check abuses of governmental power. And to start confronting the Alberto Gonzaleses of the world — before they wreak havoc.

Believing you're fat may be more emotionally damaging than actually being obese.

Can a new administration help the world forget the sins of its predecessor? Should it?

The climate change memorandum we can only hope for.

The government provides billions of dollars in child care subsidies to help move welfare recipients into the work force. Here's the catch: To get the subsidies, people transitioning off welfare need to have a job already.

Looking at the complex U.S.-Saudi relationship in a time of terrorism, rising oil prices and climate change.

A film on a health care system that impoverishes and kills people, just because they lose their jobs.

Studies show the over-50 demographic needs AIDS education.

An essay collection makes the case that, in the digital age, community is more a matter of ideas than of geography. Even if the idea is a Nigerian e-mail scam.

Hey, man, this baby boomer retirement thing ain't that big a deal. OK?

Mike Wallace helps climate-savvy investors determine whether companies will prosper or shrivel as carbon dioxide regulation becomes reality.

Only a fool would support expanded domestic exploration — offshore or elsewhere — under the Bush administration's dysfunctional energy policies. Here's how those policies need to change for America to responsibly find the energy it needs.

As seen in our main story on a cure for billion-dollar cost overruns, here's a look at some infamous public works projects and what went wrong.

A Danish professor promotes a cure for billion-dollar cost overruns in government megaprojects: Use past boondoggles as a baseline.

Here's how government can help curb America's seemingly endless appetite for "more."

Oregon researchers develop counseling approaches that reduce anorexia, bulimia and obesity among young women — apparently for years.

Michael Reynolds has been building his variety of low-consumption, off-the-grid housing for decades. Now, though, the Earthship is taking off.

An engineering professor has submitted a patent application for a circular, spinning aircraft design ... or flying saucer