Education, Arts and Health for Newsweek
Education: No Child Outside the Classroom
When No Child Left Behind became law in 2002, teachers suspected there'd be some casualties—they just didn't think field trips would be one of them.
The Short of It: Five Books You Do Have Time For
Here are five books for people in a hurry. We promise: you can read one in the time it takes to watch a movie.
Wine: Tastes Great, Less Billing
In a world without price tags or labels, which wines would rule?
A Boom In ‘Poorism’
Most tourists scrupulously avoid grubby alleys in foreign cities where they might brush past gun-toting drug lords, but Kevin Outterson, a law professor at Boston University, actually paid to do it.
Campaign 2008: The Health-Care Debate
At the Republican debate in New Hampshire earlier this month, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney gave himself a gentle pat on the back for the health-care system he helped create in Massachusetts.
Health For Life: A Guide to Predicting Your Medical Future
You can't lower your age or upgrade your genes, but when it comes to assessing your health with the latest screenings, your fate is in your hands.
San Diego Arts Coverage
Countdown to Curtain: Opera as Turducken
Opera is the turducken of classical music: monumental, multi-layered, inconceivable to anyone who hasn't experienced it live, and endlessly satisfying if you just sink your teeth into it and let all the different flavors and textures do their thing.
But if you strip away all the drama and glory, it's a cottage industry that...
Countdown to Curtain: The Complete 10-Part Series
What happens when someone calls in sick with pneumonia the week the opera is supposed to open? And who is the man who raises and lowers the curtain?
Dudamel's baton entices a new wave of classical music lovers
The hardest part about preparing for a 10-minute telephone interview with Gustavo Dudamel is figuring out what to do with all that energy.
There are days he plays second-fiddle to his Strad
Playing a Stradivarius is a little like dating a celebrity. One day, you're going about your business, waiting tables in Santa Monica or performing violin concertos from coast to coast. The next, everyone wants to take your picture - together. Your friends want to know about her "moods," and the media speculates about how much you spend on accessories and upkeep.
S.D. Jewish Book Fair extends its reach
At the 14th annual San Diego Jewish Book Fair, inquisitive types can meet: one victim of torture. A professor of cultural criticism. An enemy of oenological snobbery. One atheist. One self-professed expert on divinity. And that's just Christopher Hitchens.
City Book Fair wants to put burgeoning literary community on the same page
Buenos Aires had Borges.
St. Petersburg had Pushkin. And Nabokov. And Akhmatova. And Brodsky. Not to mention Dostoevsky. (Ah, the Russians!)
Even petite Newburyport, Mass., population 17,000, draws thousands of tourists and over 60 authors to its annual literary festival. What about San Diego?
Real Estate and Business for the IHT/NYT
For Peruvians, Baskets for the U.S. Market Bring a New Way of Life
SAN ANTONIO DE PINTUYACU, Peru — Women in this remote Amazon village can weave fibers from the branch of the chambira palm tree into practically anything they need — fishing nets, hammocks, purses, skirts and dental floss.
'Extreme' houseguests put expatriate hosts to the test
The words just slipped out at the wedding reception, as Eliana Mukherjee and her new husband were saying goodbye to friends and family before setting off for their future home in Costa Rica.
"Please come visit!" they announced.
International real estate sales challenge brokers and customers
Poetry may be lost in translation, as Robert Frost declared, but in the world of international real estate, other things can be endangered too.
Snowboarders come in from the cold
David Schuh has been snowboarding since 1985, back when he and other fans were considered renegades on the slopes. Today, all that has changed.
A sense of stylistic history in Rome
ROME -- Cristina Santaroni, an architect living in Rome, views her work as something akin to another spatial art.
Spend/Thrift: Online MBA programs come of age
The Global Executive MBA at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business is a top-rated program for midcareer professionals. As with many other master of business administration programs for executives, the price tops $115,000, applicants have more than 10 years of work experience, and they arrive from the four corners.
What sets this program apart? It is almost completely Internet-based.
All Work/All Play: A clip and a dream
In July 2005, Kyle MacDonald, a 26-year-old food industry sales representative from Montreal, set out with a single red paper clip, a posting on Craigslist and a mission: Keep on trading for bigger and better things until he ended up with a house.
All Work/All Play: A clip and a dream
In July 2005, Kyle MacDonald, a 26-year-old food industry sales representative from Montreal, set out with a single red paper clip, a posting on Craigslist and a mission: Keep on trading for bigger and better things until he ended up with a house.
2 Cent's Worth: Creative stalling
If people always did what they should, when they should, the world would be a much more efficient place. It would also be short two revolutionary search engines, Google and Yahoo which were invented when their founders should have been writing theses; one theory of relativity, developed when Einstein was supposed to be working in a patent office; and most prehistoric art.
Gen Y struggles with ABCs
Vera Babayeva is upbeat about her plans after graduating from the Harvard Divinity School in June, even though she has no job prospects, no savings and $20,000 in graduate school loans. Her parents pay her rent, though she isn't pleased about needing their help at the age of 24.
Opulence in Paris and a river view
PARIS - Location affects real estate values the world over. But in this city, where a well-placed room can be valued at €100,000, a truly spectacular address can send prices into the stratosphere.
Golden rule for start-ups: Keep investors informed
It almost doesn't matter where they are or what sector they are in: Start-up companies are hot. The number of initial public offerings almost doubled over the past two years and the volume of global transactions hit $167 billion in 2005, according to a new report by Ernst & Young.
Hard-working guardians of a crumbling past
MONTBAZON, France - As rain clouds closed over the Donjon du Faucon Noir, the medieval fortress that Harry Atterton spent four years restoring, he was moved to apologize.
New ideas to ease into old age
Tony Knopp, a 58-year-old administrator with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he is ready to retire "yesterday." With $1 million in pensions and savings combined, he and his wife want to spend their golden years vacationing in Florida and enjoying their second home in rural Vermont.
For many vineyard estates, prices are withering
Pierre Hodara is selling Le Domaine de la Pique Rouge, a farmhouse and 21 hectares in the hills of the Languedoc region in France. He said he would be happy to get €500,000; the Web site lists the price as "negotiable."
Spent/Thrift: Getting gadgets without a byte to the wallet
Gary Foreman grew up in gadget paradise. His father, who worked for Motorola, always brought home the best new technology products. "When I was a kid, we always had the latest and greatest TVs around," Foreman, 53, said. "I saw an eight-track tape before anyone else in my neighborhood did."
How do you manage: Manners matter more than you know
When Tamiko Zablith decided to open an etiquette school in Paris, her idea met with staunch skepticism from French acquaintances. "Almost 99 percent of the French people said it will never work," said Zablith, who grew up in the United States. "They think they don't need to be educated. 'Savoir vivre originated with Louis XIV,' they say. 'And we're certainly not going to have an American teach us."'
Counting the ways to use that bonus
After a grueling year, solid third-quarter profits mean one thing on Wall Street: it's payback time. In 2004, the New York State comptroller's office estimated that year-end bonuses totaled $15.9 billion, translating into an average of slightly over $100,000 per Wall Street employee. This salary sweetener, typically a percentage of base pay, is not split evenly among analysts and executives, but early projections for 2005 suggest juicier bonuses across the board.
In Malibu, new folks in town show 'trailer flash'
MALIBU, California - In a land where people pay for estates in cash, and property prices, like lot sizes, tend to follow the maxim that bigger is better, mobile homes selling for almost $2 million hardly raise an eyebrow. But then, for this ZIP code, that's a relative bargain.
And these are relative mobile homes.
Savvy, jaded, distracted and loaded: Marketing to college students poses quite a quandary
For a while Tina Koh saved all her shopping bags, but she has gotten over that. Now she collects them only for milestone purchases. "If I buy a Louis Vuitton purse, I'll keep the bag," said Koh, 19, a second-year student at the University of California at Berkeley.
Guest book: Italy's stunning mosaics
PORDENONE, Italy - After crafting mosaics for almost half a century, William Bertoja knows that his art withstands the test of time.
"People are always afraid to walk on mosaic," said Bertoja, who lives in northern Italy. "But the more you walk on it, the more it is used, the more it becomes beautiful."
Picture Window: Tuscany, without the hype
Impruneta, Italy - Before the hype from books and movies like "Under the Tuscan Sun," Tuscany was just a swath of olive groves in the Italian heartland, dotted with old homes and even older families
Taking a gamble on human capital
The pitch goes something like this: Imagine investing in business superstars when they are just starting out, the way people do with athletes or music celebrities. What if a scout had spotted Bill Gates when he was 18 and given him money for books and college tuition, in exchange for a cut of his later earnings?
Spend/thrift: Is that 2nd degree really worth it?
When compulsory education ends, every step up the academic ladder is a financial negotiation: Will this course, certificate or degree be more valuable to my career than the time, money and effort that I have invested? Niche fields like aromatherapy, casino dealing, feng shui and wine making may be fascinating to study, but if professional advancement is your primary goal, there may be cheaper ways of getting there.
Summer reading, in a new place
The French woman does not walk. She glides, her signature scent trailing her like an afterthought. She is reed thin but tucks into her crème brulée with enviable abandon. Worst of all, there's no way to describe her other than a certain je ne sais quoi.
Picture Window: As low-key as 26 rooms and a view of Venice can be
CONEGLIANO, Italy - It is the stuff of myth, a table so heavy it took eight strong Venetian men to carry it into the dining room. But such a table, hewn from the heart of a single sequoia tree, brought to Italy and burnished with time and countless dinners, actually exists. And it is one of the things Domenico Aracri will miss about his house.
All Work/All Play: In fair weather or foul, the raining queen of Paris
When it comes to the retail business, Chantal Voisin, an umbrella merchant in Paris, has a theory: When it rains, it pours.
Entry Level: When and how to seek a helping hand
As long as there has been wealth, there have been financial advisers. They counseled kings and merchants on how many sheep to trade, whether to invest in battleships, and how salt and myrrh fared on the commodities market. Managing a household today is about as complicated as running a small nation, and the services that financial advisers offer to individual investors have evolved correspondingly.
Emerging Markets: How to get in the game
Once the enfants terribles of the investment world - immature, volatile, dazzling and quick to burn out - emerging markets are growing up. The features that attracted foreign capital in the mid-1990s, like robust growth and low costs, continue to characterize these markets today, but two key things have changed: developing countries have made sound structural and economic reforms, and investors got smart about where they put their money.
Career Change: Finding the right fit
If any literary character would have been a good candidate for a career change, it was Emma Bovary. Born with grand ambitions but stuck on a road that was going nowhere as a provincial housewife, Flaubert's heroine literally died of ennui. What if she had just followed her passion, moved to Paris and gone into couture?
In Romania, they do as the Romans do
TIMISOARA, Romania - At the University of the West in Timisoara, Romania, enrollment in Italian language classes has doubled in the past two years. But it is not Dante that beckons. If more than literature students have started signing up for Italian, it is because entrepreneurs from Italy have become a major economic force in Timisoara, a provincial capital of 750,000 inhabitants near Romania's western border.
As EU date nears, Bucharest shakes off a drab image
BUCHAREST - Cristina Tutan sighed as she drove up to the Stirbei Palace, a villa in the city center that had been on the market for more than a year. "It's falling to pieces," Tutan said as she stepped into the foyer. That was putting it gently. The neo-Classical mansion, built in 1835 and seized by the Communist government in 1940, had been neglected for decades. What remained was a carcass: smashed floor mosaics, rotting wood and layers of dust.
How do you manage?: Corporate kindergarten: Don't forget the crayons
In a now infamous e-mail faux pas, a summer associate at a top New York law firm wrote to a colleague, "went to a nice 2hr sushi lunch" and then recounted how he spent the rest of the day shooting the breeze with people and sending e-mail messages. "Unfortunately, I actually have work to do," the message ended. He accidentally sent it to his entire division, jeopardizing his job and going down in corporate blunder history.
Spend/Thrift: Finding the clues to expert appraisal
Watching appraisers on "Antiques Roadshow," a popular television series transplanted from Britain to the United States, it is obvious that this is no job for a dilettante.
Entry Level: Getting Real about Retirement
For a young professional or someone just starting a career, planning a retirement portfolio might seem as compelling as learning the rules of shuffleboard - and about as worthwhile. But given the fact that inflation, health care costs, increasing longevity and the uncertain future of government-provided benefits may render any pension insufficient, the benefit of saving early is no joke.
A few old stories from a summer covering crime for the San Diego Union-Tribune
Lost teen's family and friends are still hopeful
Parents of Eric Sears discuss son's life, death
Searchers find body believed to be teen's
Searchers remained hopeful until the end
Search weighs heavy on missing teen's friend
...and for the Seattle Times
Missing girl's family waits in house that's too quiet
Potential abduction suspect arrested in missing girl case
Victim's friends wonder what led to Kent slaying
Man waits 3 days to call cops after prostitute dies in tub