Who knew?  While some members of Congress are fuming about immigration across our southern border, the US is opening the gates to other folks, primarily from China.  Over the past few years nearly 48 million of that nation’s wealthiest citizens have migrated to other countries

Who doesn’t love a clash of Titans?  Not Hollywood certainly.  But in the world of economics, something in that vein is going on as Nobel laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, takes on Thomas Piketty and his recent best seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.  Piketty’s tome is 700 p

From time to time, I’ve speculated about how changes in technology will affect the future. (Blogs 7/25 & 2/14/14)  Some consequences I hadn’t foreseen, however, until The Week brought them to my attention. (8/29/14)  Let’s think about prostitution for a moment.  Even the

Literature has been no more kind to its prostitutes than real life has been. While fallen wives have made memorable heroines — Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina among them —  few novels feature the travails of working girls.  Fannie Hill and Moll Flanders are the exception

When it comes to inversions, (Blog 8/28/14) — corporate shell games to avoid U. S. taxes — some defenders of the practice tie themselves in knots to excuse unpatriotic behavior.  Diana Furchtgott-Roth of Market Watch.com, for example, insists the fault behind this behavio

Yahoo news recently carried an article about a college student who lived in his car during his Freshman year because he couldn’t afford housing.  He talked about the embarrassment he faced because of it, but his experience is far from unique.  Homelessness  is a condition too man

Many years ago, I recall listening to a pundit’s warning on the PBS McNeal-Lehrer Report that a time might come when the world would look back upon the simpler days of the cold war when all the United States had to worry about was Soviet containment.  Once the shadow of the Russian

In its “Spotlight” column, Vanity Fair featured two actresses of a certain age who seemed to look better over time.  Charlotte Rampling was one of them, a woman whose name has become a verb: To rample — meaning “to render a male helpless with a kind of coldly elusive sens

Only a few weeks ago, before school started, the temperature climbed above the hundred mark and turned my thoughts to ice cream.  As a child, my mind often wandered in that direction, especially on Saturdays when I’d walked with my mother to the center of town and she’d do a litt

The two years I spent in England were enriching in many ways but gastronomically they were a bust.  The English like to boil everything from their laundry to their brussel sprouts which,  like their socks, come out of the pot blanched white enough to see through.  What they don’t