I really had fun watching Sandra Day O'Connor speak today at the Games for Change conference which I attended for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, story here.
For the Huffington Post, here's a first report on what I assume is the only retired Supreme Court Justice involved in developing a video game.
I'm in the midst of attending the Games for Change conference, where I learned about something called Alternate Reality Games, in which the lines between truth and the game are blurred --for example, imaginary characters in the game have real-world phone numbers that you can call, and listen to their voice mail, you get GPS coordinates to actual pay phones which lead you to other clues and so on.
One example I'm very taken with is World Without Oil a fictional documentary project which asked people to imagine what their lives would be like during the first 32 weeks of a massive oil crisis --in which gas hits more than $6 a gallon, which is now not that hard to imagine. Over this time, 1,500 people wrote in and shared their imaginings of "what if".
What's the point?
Ken Eklund, the creator, said at the conference:
I did not feel that there was a very good narrative, a good point of view of what the future of as actually going to be like. You had people who had opinions of what was going to happen, in every case, these are top down opinions. I was interested in tapping into the web 2.0.
We could ask those people, if there’s an oil crisis, how will your job be doing? If you drive a truck for a living? If you're in travel? We wanted to get people recognizing what their vulnerability was. We didn’t have a real solution to our oil dependency, we didn’t advocate anything, we deliberately created a vacuum of it, we said, let’s get the hive mind engaged on defining the problem. The players came forward and said "I'm starting to share your concern, let me add the thing I’m expert on, I know how an oil crisis is going to affect my life."
This is all very interesting, but thinking about it this morning is taking me off the subject of global warming, and on to the subject of the future of my career, the future of being a nonfiction writer.
The value a nonfiction writer brought to the world used to be easy to describe. We go forth in the world, and find out what people think, and know, and tell everyone else these stories. But I think that way may be finished, or, to be more accurate --it's finishing. In Alternate Reality Games and in all of these new forms of media, people are telling their own stories, without mediation.
The new value of a nonfiction writer I think will be to tell our own stories, the stories only we can tell, based on some unusual experience or expertise. And, the knowledge and the application of actual narrative craft.
UPDATE: I blogged about this a bit more at the Renegade Writer.
The all-business class airline Silverjet folded today, provoking these thoughts from me on the demise of "mass luxury" for the Huffington Post.
A bit more info for those geekily and freakily interested in income statistics. When I was Editor-at -Large at the late, lamented American Demographics magazine, one of the side benefits was the uncanny nerdy ability to spout statistics about the US population. It's a skill I no longer have, alas, which I believe makes me less fun to have at cocktail parties.
If I thought people were engaging in too much self pity over not having a housekeeper or a new car, I liked to break out my favorite downer stat: how little money most Americans live on. I think most people of a certain socioeconomic group assume that most two-income households easily crack $50,000 a year, but, that's not true: median income today is well shy of $49,000. And because I have always either lived or spent a lot of time in New York City, I was often assured that these rules simply didn’t apply to New York where everyone simply had to earn more just to survive.
Hogwash. I had to look back to 2003 to get the kind of data I wanted, but back then, in the US, median household income was $43,564, and about 14% earned $100,000. In New York City, median income was actully lower $39,937, and only about 15% earned over $100,000.
Oh, that includes the outer boroughs though. So just in Manhattan (or New York County) it’s higher: median $47,415, and about 24% earned $100,000 or more, but that still means that the vast majority of people in Manhattan ain’t rolling in it –it’s just that the ones that are are making out really well.
You can read much, more more on this page at the Census Bureau's website.
I attended the Indy 500 on Sunday, and it was quite a spectacle, as I relate on The Huffington Post. Here's a slide show of what I witnessed!
Last week, Ginger, my beloved gray tabby cat, died. I've been very sad about it, but the one bright spot has been the adoption of a new cat, Jack. I wrote about that, and the very cool nonprofit that sheltered Jack until he came to his new home, for the Huffington Post.
Here are two pictures of Ginger, from a trip we took with her last summer. The bed she's on in the first is at the InterContinental in Montreal, the second is in a cabin we rented in Quebec. (She was totally psyched to discover that the cabin had mice! I was less so.) The darkish one is a tender moment Ginger had with our big orange cat Buzzy, and then there's one of our new guy, Jack.
Speaking of black cats, I didn't realize until today that black cats are often discriminated against because some people really do think they're bad luck. I can't imagine anything more ridiculous. You can learn lots about black cats, and all things cat, actually, at Your Black Cat, which was nice enough to link to my HuffPo piece today.
UPDATED: The charity that we adopted Jack from, the Picasso Fund, featured Jack in its May 2008 newsletter.
As I mentioned a few days ago, I visited Poland last May, and wrote a couple of travel stories about my time there. I also had personal reasons for making the trip, as my grandparents were originally from Poland, survived World War II and the Holocaust, and eventually rebuilt their lives in the Bronx.
I'm working on a larger piece about all of this, but here's the start of my thinking, for the Huffington Post, about the day I visited Auschwitz. A few images from Birkenau from that day:
I was in Baltimore last week, where I caught the end of a controversial art installation, which closed off a beloved city park to the public with golden chain link fences. You can see what I wrote about it here. Aso, The Baltimore Sun has a lovely photo gallery of the installation in its glory.
I was only able to snap a few pictures before my camera battery died, what you see below is a protest sign, and the fences in the midst of being dismantled.
There is a battle brewing in the Bahamas, involving all the
Commonwealth's veins of lifeblood: its natural beauty, its economy, its
people, and of course, tourism.
The controversy is centered in Guana Cay, an island where the San Francisco-based Discovery Land Company plans to build a 595 acre, $500 million resort. A citizens' group called Save Guana Cay Reef Association is suing the Commonwealth to stop it, fearing that leaching from the planned golf course will destroy the coral reef surrounding the island and that a marina that will be carved out of a mangrove swamp will also cause irreparable damage. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the island has previous experience with developers. "Disney's Big Red Boat cruise ship anchored off the island for five years, and the operators dredged a channel, damaging a portion of the reef before abandoning the project in 1993."
Someone cleaned up the damage though--the very developers who want to build their new resort project. "Discovery Land cleaned up the site, which is within its proposed development. That earned it the support of some Guana Cay residents."
It's a complicated matter, and the Commonwealth's Supreme Court will eventually decide it. (To follow this story in words and images, see Erik Gauger's project, Rise Up Sweet Island.) But the controversy, and all the arguments on either side, are by no means particular to the Bahamas. As just one example, I wrote a story about Roatán, one of the Caribbean islands off the coast of Honduras, for Men's Journal's February issue. (The picture above left is from Copan in Honduras.) A new cruise ship terminal is under construction there, which will bring one million tourists on cruise ships per year to the island within five years--up from 300,000 per year today. The concerns there are similar: environmental damage and cultural degradation on the one hand versus economic development and the spot on the map that comes from being a tourist magnet on the other. And of course, we don't have to go abroad to find similar: off of South Carolina on the Sea Islands, there's the struggle to keep the Gullah-Geechee culture alive--here, golf tourism is also the encroaching force, and heritage tourism seen as a solution.
In this piece for the Huffington Post, I discuss how to enjoy a vacation without harming the destination. I don't really have the answers, but one big part of it is definitely spending your money locally.
There are lots of neutral ways that we encounter people's
hands--handshakes, attaboy back pats, even brushing a stranger's hand
on the subway isn't the most horrific thing. But leaving aside foot
fetishes and footsie fantasies, we don't tend to have such positive
associations with being touched by stranger's feet. Think about getting
kicked, trampled, stepped on. And feet look sort of weird, and they
smell, and they're prone to horribleness, fungi, and warts, and corns
and other protrudences that are best hidden behind a pair of thick
socks and a good layer of shoe leather, certainly not rubbed on our own
bare skin.
In this dispatch, I ponder the connection between ashiatsu massage --which I experienced for the first time at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, pictured above -- primates and Mike Huckabee.
UPDATED: Thanks to National Geographic Traveler's blog for this link love!
If you've seen shochu or soju on a cocktail menu recently, and wondered what it was, wonder no more. This Asian spirit --Shochu in Japan, soju in Korea – has long been popular throughout Asia, and the past decade has seen shochu creep from souvenir in the luggage of tourists returning home from Asia, to liquor stores and cocktail bars on the coasts and in fashionable spots throughout the country. Here's a story I wrote about it on TheStreet.com.
It's Mardi Gras in New Orleans, a time for feast before the fast. In this dispatch for the Huffington Post, I wonder about the role that moderation plays in all the revelry.
I'm in Aspen now, and the high season, which will start on the
Friday before Christmas, is just about to begin. For right now, it's a
bit quiet, and the big excitement is that Heidi Klum is here (because
husband Seal will be performing), and the scuttle is that paparazzi got
kicked out of the lodge at the Buttermilk
mountain where they
were lying in wait for pics of Klum and brood on skis.
Aspen is about ideas, and one idea here is that celebrities can be free to just chill out and not be bothered by their celebrity -while getting, of course, the full-fledged celebrity treatment. This doesn't make any sense if you stop to think about it for a moment, but what can you say about a place that has officially sanctioned, apparently town government-installed "thumbing stations" for hitchhikers, and at the same time enough private jet traffic that you must clarify whether you have arrived at the public or the private airport when arranging transport into town?
Read the rest of this report on Aspen, the first of two, on the Huffington Post.
I met Johnny Walker, the director of wine and spirits for Malmasion, an excellent boutique hotel chain in the UK, while I was in Scotland over the summer, and immediately knew I wanted to write about him. Here's a fun little story for TheStreet.com about Walker's picks for the best in scotch.
The senior managers of Timbuk2, a San Francisco-based manufacturer of messenger bags, gathered on a gently sloping granite ledge at an altitude of 12,000 feet, overlooking the blue-gray shimmer of one of the dozen or so Ice Lakes, slopes of stubby pine trees, and beyond onto ragged peaks. It was the middle of June, but snow still mounded on the ground. A thunderstorm had just skirted the campsite and the wind screamed constantly, cold and fierce.
These four men and two women lead a growing company of 70 employees back at sea level, where they'd typically be worrying about things like financing, brand management, e-commerce, and retail sales. But for the past four days they'd been in the backcountry, and their concerns had been somewhat more basic: Would that small blister turn into a festering sore? Would those dark clouds bring rain? Does that bear paw print in the mud mean there's an actual bear nearby?
The group was halfway through a seven-day backpacking trip organized by the National Outdoor Leadership School, or NOLS. Accompanying them were two NOLS instructors and me; I'd tagged along to see what would happen. It had been nearly 100 hours since any of us had had a shower, or used a flushing toilet, cradled a cell phone to our ear, or run our fingers across a keyboard. As the sun started to set, the temperature, which had hit the high 80s when we'd set out from the town of Lander, Wyoming, just four days before, was hovering just above freezing.
To read the story, click here.
Here's a story that I wrote for Yoga Journal about green living and how it comports with yoga philosophy. Yoga Journal - Yoga Habitat - Get Your Green On.
Earlier this summer, the Chronicle of Philanthropy ran a story I wrote about the Heard Museum in Phoenix, and how it handled controversy that erupted over an exhibit called Holy Land. (It's available online here, but a subscription is required to view it--which is why I didn't post it sooner!)
The question of how arts institutions handle controversy continues to interest me, and yesterday's Globe and Mail has a story about the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, which is facing criticism from veteran's groups over one panel in an exhibit dealing with the 1945 firebombing of Dresden. The wall text seemed to question whether the Allies were justified in killing 600,000 during that attack. Veteran's groups were outraged, the museum's CEO, a defender of curatorial independence, departed under pressure, and now the board is trying to come up with wall text that will please the offended. The question is whether the museum's strategy of appeasement will lead to other groups demanding to edit wall texts?
In a squat brown office park in
Fairfield, New Jersey—the headquarters of the Telebrands
empire—five men and one woman are gathered around a long conference
table, trying to figure out what’s wrong in your life.
This story looks at how one company, responsible for many of the short infomercials you see on TV, finds the products that it puts on the air.
Some 40 million Americans move house each year, and the summer is the time the moving vans get in gear. Here's the low-down on the cardboard box and bubble-wrap set. (Click image at left to read.)
Playing sports isn't just a game. For CEOs and CEOs-to-be, sports may be a more effective training ground
than any business school, according to both psychologists and
entrepreneur athletes themselves. (Click image at left to read.)
This month, Inc. selected 50 of the most intriguing "green" or eco-friendly privately own companies in the country. I quick-sketch profiled four of the so-selected, Clif Bar, Eden Foods, Stonyfield Farm, and Zoots.
These companies make an explicit appeal to green-minded consumers, and that's definitely a smart business strategy. After all, who doesn't like the feeling of doing good while they do what Americans do best, which is shop?
The proliferation of green marketing makes it easy to forget that shopping isn't quite the same thing as political activism. We won't be able to shop our way to a better environment, as Emily Figdor, clean air and energy advocate at USPIRG told me recently. While all of the “green living” eco-friendly steps that we take in our own lives are wonderful, they do little to solve the most pressing environmental problems, which, despite all appearances, really have very little to do with the type of light bulbs in your house, or even the kind of car you drive.
What will really keep the icecaps in their deep chill, if anything can, is broad-based, climate-protecting federal legislation that will limit industrial emissions. (Industrial emissions contribute far more to global warming than all of our individual actions or non-actions combined.) “I definitely understand and empathize with people’s desire to make an impact in their own lives, but it’s really important not to get lost in that,” says Figdor.
The simplest way to do that? Vote. And write to your elected officials, sign petitions, exercise your franchise, make some noise. Don't just look at the organic food in your cupboard and feel satisfied.
I understand this is a deeply unpopular and almost heretical sentiment in a can-do culture --to suggest that personal action isn't enough to solve a serious global problem, and furthermore to suggest that the choices we make in our personal lives matter a whole less than the actions we take in the ballot box. We have a deeply ingrained resistance to this fact, as NYU sociologist Micki McGee's points out in her fascinating book Self Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. As she told me recently, “individual changes are lovely, but legislative and policy change is always more potent than anything an individual might do.”
The old phrase, "think globally, act locally", could probably stand some revision.
Here is the story of Curves, the 30-minute fitness franchise that has become part of the background almost every where you go in the United States. Gary Heavin, the CEO, plans to cure the nation's obesity epidemic...and here's an amazing statistic: For every two McDonald's in this country, there's now one Curves. This story took up much of my spring and early summer this year, and I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.
The idea that yoga can offer practical lessons for coping with ambition seems most dubious. Yet yoga and ambition aren't such an odd couple after all, I learned while researching this story. Nothing's wrong with ambition (thank heavens!) so long as you go after your goals the right way. Here are some questions to ask yourself if you think you are in danger of either becoming a lazy slug or driven to distraction. And here's the scoop on working with your "edge" --the line between pushing yourself too hard and taking things too easy.
I read this article about disappearing tattoo ink in the New Scientist, and it reminded me that I spent a lot of time a year or so being a little too interested in tattoos. I have no tattoos myself, and really have never wanted one --which on its own is enough to make me mildly curious about people who go for tattoos in a big way. My curiosity became acute after I wrote a story about a very interesting labor dispute that Costco had with a much-tattooed, much body-modified employee. The employee said that her bod mod-ing was in fact her religion..and the lawyers took it from there. (Here's a link to the story, you might have to register to read and if you're worried about leaving tracks for the NSA to follow, try BugMeNot.)
I still wonder whether disputes like the Costco conflagration are going to become more common as an increasing number of people have tattoos or other body modifications. I also wonder whether a tattoo that is a temporary is really a tattoo at all?
Here is a story debunking the mobility myth that I wrote for Reason magazine's April 2006 issue. Many people believe that we live in "an increasingly mobile society", but the fact is, now more than ever, Americans are more likely to stay put.
What you don't get in the article is the amusing contributor's note, which may be my favorite to date: Alison Stein Wellner knew it wasn't quite normal to move 13 times in 10 years, as she did the decade after she graduated from college. Still, she says, "I didn't think we were off-trend"; she took it on faith that Americans today are increasingly footloose. It wasn't until she looked at the data that she realized such serial relocation was more typical of her grandparent's generation than of her own. In "The Mobility Myth", Wellner tears apart the notion that we're a nation of rootless wanderers. A former editor at American Demographics, Wellner has written on culture and trends for Mother Jones, The Washington Post and many other publications. She lives in Manhattan, for the moment.
Here's one funny fact that this note didn't include. Not only did I grow up in Manhattan, but I actually now live in the apartment that I grew up in. (Not with my parents, I might add.) Talk about coming full circle! Rest assured: I no longer have any illusion of being on-trend.
Almost missed that this story had been published. (I guess I haven't been on an airplane recently!) Anyway, here's a story on the Manhattanization of Las Vegas. It has very little to do with casinos, which to me, at least, is an impressive trick for a story about Vegas.
Not too long ago, I traveled down to Chattanooga to spend the day at a very unusual company: Habitat International. This is a manufacturing company, and most of its employees have either mental disabilities, physical disabilities, or both. At a time where the number of people with disabilities is on the rise, and employment for people with disabilities is on the decline, the fact that this company is almost alone in its hiring practices is both a shame and a waste. My story about the company is in Inc.'s October 2005 issue.
The few hours that I spent at the Habitat factory were fascinating for me. I am not often in the company of people with disabilities --not often around people with autism, schizophrenia, Down's Syndrome, for instance. I have to admit that I felt some trepidation before my visit --the thought of walking around a factory where schizophrenic people pilot fork-lifts gave me pause,and I worried that I would in some way give offense to the workers. My job, after all, is to stare and to ask impertinent questions.
My worries were unfounded. The factory was a bit overwhelming, because it is so different from every other workplace I've ever visited. The mood is in some ways lighter than you'd find in a typical office park-- the workers are obviously enjoying what they do, which is in itself remarkable. But there is also a feeling of additional tension that I couldn't completely put my finger on at the time. No doubt, part of this was the typical response to a journalist's presence --they weren't sure who I was, or what I thought of them, and how I'd portray them in print. But part of it, I think, is the feeling that anything could happen at any moment, a sense of unpredictability that the company operates under. After all, it's hard to know exactly how Habitat workers are going to respond to a new situation, or even to an old situation. The funny thing is, I think this is true in all companies --who the hell knows what's going to happen tomorrow. In most companies, the reassuring "normal" stamp on employees foreheads helps managers to think the chaos is kept at bay. At Habitat, they know that chaos can erupt, and they're prepared for it.
I've been quiet for the past few days because I'm a bit under the weather.
(At some point, I need to figure out whether other people besides me always get sick right around the time the seasons change. I'm sure there are very many good reasons for this, like I tend to always have an inexplicable crush of work just before the Fall and just before the Summer, or because I fail to follow mom's instructions and never bring a sweater Just In Case.)
Anyway, it's nothing serious, I'll be back to fighting form in a few days. In the meantime, here's a story that I wrote for Continental about family-centered care at hospitals, an idea that I hope will catch on since it just makes good sense. I also hope that we'll soon find a way to provide meaningful, basic, healthcare to the 45.8 million people who are uninsured, and have few options for any sort of health care at all. Expect more from me on this subject soon.
I'm doing a series of radio interviews about the No Exit story in Mother Jones. I'll post sound links if I can.
September 15th, 2:15 pm. Arnie Arneson show on WTPL FM, New England. (Live)
September 15th, WMNF FM , Tampa, Florida. (Taped) Update: Have a listen here.
September 19th, KPFA FM Berkeley, California (Taped) Update: Have a listen here, interview starts at 12:30 into the sound file, goes to about 34:30. I was interviewed along with the Dr. Frances Winslow, San Jose's director of emergency preparedness.
Okay, so I didn't look specifically at San Jose in my story, and there's one cringe-inducing point in the interview when I'm talking about the potential for a plane strike on a nuclear power plant, and Dr. Winslow points out that there are no nuclear power plants in the bay area. But if you listen through to the end of the program, the host Andrea Lewis points out that there are other nuclear facilities in the area.
September 20th, 8:05 AM, WWRL, NYC. (Live)
Ever since I was evacuated from New Orleans last September, in what would prove to be the city's last near-miss from a hurricane, I've been thinking about the problem of evacuating people who don't have vehicles from disaster-prone areas.
Here's the story that I wrote about it last week for Mother Jones.
Is electronic communication hampering our ability to communicate face-to-face? That's the question I tackle in "Lost in Translation" , in the September 2005 issue of Inc.
The answer is a qualified yes. In this story, I make the point that in business, people are relying too heavily on email, sending text messages on sensitive matters that should really be handled face-to-face, or at least voice-to-voice. I've personally found that even people who are communication professionals--editors, writers --have a difficult time keeping control of their tone in email exchanges, especially when the subject is controversial. The more you cop out on having such conversations in person or over the phone, the rustier it seems you get at handling such interactions with aplomb. If you're prone to phone phobia, or confrontation anxiety, email and its ilk provide a neat way to never properly develop those skills.
This story could be read as a Luddite screed --down with email! --and I don't mean it that way at all. The issue here really isn't the medium, but the message: people who are lousy at communicating in person are probably not going to be any good at it electronically, and the chances of them getting better at it are small if they avoid real-time conversations. New technologies create new ways for people to communicate and build connections with each other, and that's truly exciting. But there's still the problem of the "wetware" --the person --whose fuzzy thinking, lack of diplomacy, and poor listening skills can still bring even the most sophisticated communication system to its knees.
When I interviewed Barry Wellman, director of NetLab at the University of Toronto for my story, he started his comments to me with this: "In the old days, which means seven years ago, we used to think that email and IM were very, very different than face-to-face communication, and that maybe they were even separate worlds. Now we know it's not true --they fit together in a seamless ecology." Yes. And the ecosystem can be healthy or unhealthy, depending on the skills of the people who inhabit it.
In my story, Wellman also says that "the face-to-face world and the bit-to-bit world can fit together." There's an interesting article, Social Machines, in the August 2005 MIT Technology Review that reviews the various ways this is happening. "We don't want to talk with computers, we want to talk through them," writes author Wade Rousch. He talks about a Boston start-up called Proxpro, "that's testing a cellphone-based service whereby a traveling businessperson can register a change in location with an SMS message; if a potential contact who matches the travelers pre-specified areas of interest (say Oracle databases) is nearby, both parties are notified, and they can use SMS to arrange a meeting."
Now that's pretty nifty. But, if one or both people who sign up for this service stink at face-to-face communication, won't the service be fairly useless? Or, put another way, if they're going to invest in such a service, shouldn't they also invest in upgrading their interpersonal communication skills? Bits and bytes can bring people together--but they can only take you just so far.
Here are some stories I've written on culture, politics and trends. (Also take a look at the stories in my health and business portfolios, as there's lots of overlap.)
Big Biz Profits in Hawking Our Values. The Chicago Tribune, January 28, 2005. These days, it's not enough just to be a well-run business--in fact it would be almost
heretical for a company to say it is "good" based solely on its ability to turn an honest profit. We want our companies to give to charity.
Download ChicagoTribOpED.pdf
Working Together. American Archaeology, Spring 2005. Native Americans have often been suspect of archaeology. But when the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation wanted to learn more about their history, they consulted an archaeologist.
Download AmericanArchPequot.pdf
Covert Cosmetics. Continental, March 2004. The strange relationship between a modern man and his looks.
Download ContMaleBeauty.pdf
A New Flavor in the Melting Pot. Forecast. With Names like Jorge Singh and Diego Chan, Asian Hispanics are at the nexus of two of the most powerful demographic trends in recent years.
Download ForecastAsianHispanic.pdf
Oh Come All Ye Faithful. American Demographics. As religious organizations seek to maintain their flocks in this fragmenting world, they're increasingly tailoring their core product - religion itself - to the needs of specific demographic groups. In the face of flat religious attendance, churches and synagogues have long borrowed marketing tools and tactics from companies selling more worldly goods to attract people to their congregations.
Why Shrinking Cities Sprawl. Sierra Magazine. For most people, the word "sprawl" conjures up images of boomtowns in the rapidly growing West and South, like Las Vegas, or Nashville, or Atlanta. But metropolitan areas with stagnant-or even declining-populations can also suffer from sprawl. To read, click image at left.
Shining Stars. Yankee Magazine, April 2003 Just about every week, somewhere in New England, the Red Star Twirlers take the stage. Ranging in age from just six years old to 20, the 36 girls in this troupe flip, twist, toss, and twirl a baton in ways that defy both gravity and the imagination. One performer balances an 18inch baton across the bridge of her nose; another rolls a still- twirling baton across her back, then catches it-still rotating-in her other hand. Still another Red Star throws her baton far into the air, snakes her hand between her egs, and catches it behind her back before tossing it to another twirler. All of these acrobatics are perfectly timed to music, interspersed with dance moves. All of the twirlers beam from ear to ear.Download shining_stars.pdf
The Marriage Habit. Forecast. Baby Boomers may once have believed in free love, but now they're hooked on matrimony.
Download ForecastBoomMarriage.pdf
The Next 25 Years. American Demographics. The demographic book on
2025 has already been written, as most of the people who will be alive
then are already alive today. What are the fundamental demographic
trends that will shape the consumer market over the next
quarter-century?
Download AD25Years.pdf
The Citizenship Effect. Forecast. A new way to measure voter participation diminshes the voting gap between whites and ethnic and racial minorities.
Download ForecastCitizen.pdf
