Back in 2006, when I was 24, my life was cozy and safe. I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college, and I was living with my boyfriend, Henry, and two cats in a grubby but spacious two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I spent most of my free time sitting with Henry in our cheery yellow living room on our stained Ikea couch, watching TV. And almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

Exposed

Not far from our hotel in the center of Palermo is Oratorio di San Lorenzo, a little Baroque church founded by one of those orders that looks after the unwanted dead. The space is crammed with plaster skulls and skeletons, mostly painted, but the last chapel on the right held what we had come to see: matching pairs of stucco corpses by the sculptor Giacomo Serpotta, who could impart life and motion to all kinds of unlikely entities, such as abstract Virtues and tired old scriptural stories. These are called skeletons in the guidebook, but at least half the flesh still clings to the bones, especially on the chest and diaphragm. They've also kept their original grime; in the shadows, the stark white flesh is almost black with it.

The Museum of the Dead

The priority is containment. That’s as fancy as it sounds: With the water table only 20 centimeters below the surface in Myanmar, it is little use to dig pit latrines, so buckets or tanks for human waste are needed instead. Providing such things is made harder by the refusal of Myanmar’s government to accept help. And it is also hampered by our unwillingness to even talk about it.

In our sanitary, plumbed lives, the toilet — an engineering marvel — removes waste out of sight and out of mind.

Send in the Latrines

The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth. An instructor at a “college of last resort” explains why.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower | Professor X

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but success does. Capitalism, moored in values of hard work, honesty, and fairness, is key.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Paul Graham:

Adults lie constantly to kids. I'm not saying we should stop, but I think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.

Lies We Tell Kids

In the economy of the 21st century, economic and technical innovation is increasingly based on developments that don't rely on economic incentive or public provision. Unlike 20th century innovation, the most important developments in innovation have been driven not by research funded by governments or developed by corporations but by the collaborative interactions of individuals. In most cases, this modality of innovation has not been motivated by economic concerns or the prospect of profit. This raises the possibility of a world in which some of the sectors of the economy particularly the ones dealing with innovation and creativity are driven by social interactions of various kinds, rather than by profit-oriented investment. This Article examines the development of this amateur modality of creative production, and explains how it came to exist. It then deals with why this modality is different from and potentially inconsistent with the typical modalities of production that are at the heart of modern views of innovation policy. It provides a number of policy prescriptions that should be used by governments to recognize the significance of amateur innovation, and to further the development of amateur productivity.

Money Ruins Everything

In 17 of the nation’s 50 largest cities, less than half of the students who entered high school in 2003 ended up graduating. In Detroit, which has the lowest graduation rate of the top 50 cities, not even one in four students finished high school.

(Summary from the Chronicle)

Report Shows Stunning Failures in High-School Graduation Rates

Rich or poor, young or old, high school or college grad, this book, written by economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff and syndicated financial columnist Scott Burns, can change your life for the better! If you follow the advice in this book, it will raise your living standard (possibly by a lot), improve your lifestyle, and help you spend 'til the end. And it will completely transform your financial thinking, turning every bit of conventional financial wisdom on its head.

If this sounds like a revolution in financial planning, you got it. So do The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Consumer Reports, and other top publications that have been featuring the authors' economics-based "consumption smoothing" approach to financial planning.

Spend 'Til the End substitutes economic wisdom for the "rules of dumb" that currently pass for financial advice. In the process it indicts the investment and financial-planning industry for giving most people saving and insurance targets that are much too high and then convincing them to invest in risky mutual funds and expensive insurance policies. The result is that most people are scrimping and saving during the years when they could be spending and enjoying their money -- and with no sure payoff.

Easy to read, this book is packed with practical and often shocking advice on whether to work, how to pick a career, which job to take, where to live, what sort of house to buy, how much to save, when to retire, which kind of retirement account to use, whether to have kids, whether to divorce, when to take Social Security, how fast to spend down your assets in retirement, and how to invest. null

Spend 'Til the End: The Revolutionary Guide to Raising Your Living Standard--Today and When You Retire

Cokie Roberts describes a time when women in high places practiced dinner-table diplomacy.

Power Behind the Throne