Michael Pollan's latest book, as reviewed by New York Review of Books:
The symbiosis of the American food and pharmaceutical industries, to which Pollan refers, is the grotesque avatar of the primitive supermarket that I dreaded on the eve of the Second World War. "Is it just a coincidence," Pollan asks,
that as the portion of our income spent on food has declined, spending on health care has soared? In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent...on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income.
It comes as no surprise to learn from a study published this week that, although Britons are twice as rich as they were in 1987, they are no happier.
The lack of relationship between wealth and happiness has long been common knowledge, and the knowledge itself has long been a source of happiness to moralisers who like the fact that money is not life's answer.
There are, though, two confusions involved in the idea that anything significant can be discovered by looking for a correlation between wealth and happiness. One concerns the nature of happiness, the other the nature of wealth.
Inside the Middle Class: Bad Times Hit the Good Life
Topic: Health and Wellness
6:57 am EDT, Apr 14, 2008
This report on the attitudes and lives of the American middle class combines results of a new Pew Research Center national public opinion survey with the center's analysis of relevant economic and demographic trend data from the Census Bureau. Among its key findings:
Fewer Americans now than at any time in the past half century believe they're moving forward in life.
For decades, middle-income Americans had been making absolute progress while enduring relative decline. But since 1999, they have not made economic gains.
About half of all Americans think of themselves as middle class. They are a varied lot.
For the past two decades middle-income Americans have been spending more and borrowing more. Housing has been the key driver of both trends.
At a time when these borrow-and-spend habits have spread, Americans say it has become harder to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.
Economic, demographic, technological and sociological changes since 1970 have moved some groups up the income ladder and pushed others down.
Most middle class adults agree with the old saw that the Republican Party favors the rich while the Democratic Party favors the middle class and the poor.
Which of these two decisions do you think has a bigger impact on someone's life: finding the right job, or finding the right significant other? No one's going to argue with the notion that where you live affects your employment prospects. But the place you call home has a lot to do with your chances of finding the right partner as well. Having an enticing "mating market" matters as much or more than a vibrant labor market.
It's not just that some places have more singles than others. If you're a single man or a single woman the odds of meeting that special someone vary dramatically across the country.
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
Topic: Health and Wellness
7:05 am EDT, Apr 7, 2008
To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.
I, like you, drive too much. I buy too much--of which I keep too much and also throw too much away. I overindulge my children, and myself. Directly as well as indirectly I use too much water, energy, air and space. My existence, in short, costs the planet more than it can afford. This is not some handed-down moral stricture, nor any sort of guilty self-flagellation, but a simple recognition of fact. The consequences are obvious, and near enough now to see the warts on their noses. For my own future, as well as my children's, I must change. And yet--this is what's weird--I, like you, can't. Cannot abandon comfort, convenience and pleasure for the sake of abstract knowledge. Can't stop doing it. This is interesting.
It's interesting because we think we are so rational, so intelligent, and yet we behave, both individually and as a herd, in such unintelligent ways. That's what drove this book into being.
Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children
Topic: Health and Wellness
11:31 am EDT, Mar 29, 2008
With the advent of urbanization in the early modern period, the material worlds of children were vastly altered. In industrialized democracies, a broad consensus developed that children should not work, but rather learn and play in settings designed and built with these specific purposes in mind. Unregulated public spaces for children were no longer acceptable; and the cultural landscapes of children's private lives were changed, with modifications in architecture and the objects of daily life.
In Designing Modern Childhoods, architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects examine the history and design of places and objects such as schools, hospitals, playgrounds, houses, cell phones, snowboards, and even the McDonald's Happy Meal. Special attention is given to how children use and interpret the spaces, buildings, and objects that are part of their lives, becoming themselves creators and carriers of culture. The authors extract common threads in children's understandings of their material worlds, but they also show how the experience of modernity varies for young people across time, through space, and according to age, gender, social class, race, and culture.
