Ben Schreckinger is a freelance writer and journalist based at large. From Washington, he's covered the 2012 elections, politics, and public policy for National Journal. From Burma, he's covered the Sino-American rivalry for Newsweek. He's also contributed features to Slate, the Boston Globe Ideas section, and GlobalPost, among others. He graduated in 2012 from Brown University, where he majored in classics and served as editor-in-chief of The Brown Daily Herald. Ben's interests include the intersection of politics and economics, intellectual movements, and language. His skills do not include proficiency in Excel. Email: [email protected]
by Ben Schreckinger This past November, they held the sixth annual EPIC Summit in Toledo. As the name implies, it was “a day of career-enhancing training and networking.” Epic! Use of the word “epic” has exploded in recent years, but the incidence of actual epic things has not. Now, as likely as not, “epic” refers…
by Ben Schreckinger Christmas is Wednesday, and as the recent (and absurd) controversy over the color of Santa’s skin indirectly reminds us, the holiday is an amalgam of various pagan and Christian traditions drawn from a diversity of times and places. In addition to the Gospel stories of Jesus’ birth, they include the hagiography of…
by Ben Schreckinger At the end of the week, in the predawn hours that most of us will spend sleeping off turkey and pumpkin pie, millions of Americans will gather in the dark to kick off Black Friday, the annual day-long frenzy of bargain-hunting that marks the beginning of the holiday season. Many economists wish…