Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

About David Villano

David Villano is an award-winning, Miami-based journalist who has contributed to dozens of publications, including The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Newsweek, Mother Jones and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Why Would a Medical Doctor Embrace an Unproven Treatment?

May 8, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
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Face down on a massage table, a 30-something corporate attorney grips a tiny vial of clear liquid and breathes deeply, again and again. My wife, Kathryn, an internal medicine specialist whose practice focuses on the arcane arts of alternative healing, presses her thumbs on each side of the woman’s neck and moves slowly down her spine. The woman suffers from chronic fatigue, nasal congestion, and a severely runny nose, which conventional medical treatments have failed to cure. So she’s come to see Kathryn. A few weeks later, after a handful of similar treatments, the woman calls to ... Read More

More like this: Health, May-June 2013
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The Growth of Degrowth Economics

December 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

What if we promoted policies to shrink our economy, rather than grow it? What if government officials called for a recession, perhaps a depression, as the answer to humanity’s most intractable challenges? As heretical as they sound, such questions frame very real policy proposals debated by a growing legion of economists, activists, and government officials representing the so-called Degrowth movement. Degrowthists argue that only a contraction of the world’s developed economies can help reduce dependence on fossil fuel and other environmental resources, slow climate change, and ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Work-Life Balance Benefits Low-Wage Workers, Employers

September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In late summer, with the back-to-school shopping season in full swing, a small group of clothing retailers in Chicago will challenge convention by offering their low-wage, mostly part-time workers a list of perks normally reserved for management: flexible hours, time off when needed, and a locked-in schedule of shifts that allows workers to plan a full month, rather than a few days, in advance. If researchers overseeing the experiment are correct, higher worker satisfaction at those stores will boost employee morale, retention rates and productivity, pushing labor costs down and revenues ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, News and Options, September-October 2011
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Being Frugal May Be More Genetic Than Learned

May 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Shopping at garage sales, collecting soap slivers and other dollar-stretching habits — often derided as neurotic obsessions of the frugal mind — can now be blamed on the thrifty ways of a long-forgotten ancestor. Genetics, researchers say, has a far greater effect on consumer behavior than once thought. In a study of identical twins, which was published in the April edition of Journal of Consumer Research, marketing professors Itamar Simonson of Stanford University and Aner Sela of the University of Florida report that individual consumer preferences — for such products as chocolate, ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics
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Love Thy Neighbor? Not If He’s Different

May 4, 2010 • By • 25 Comments

Universal brotherhood and tolerance toward others remains common fare at Sunday church sermons everywhere, but does the message have any impact? Apparently not. In a new study drawing on nearly a half century of data, a team of researchers report that religious adherents in the United States — especially fundamentalist Christians — are more inclined than agnostics to harbor racist attitudes toward blacks and other minorities. This "religion-racism paradox," as University of Southern California social psychologist Wendy Wood explains it, is deeply embedded in organized religion which, by ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Picking Stocks? Count the Butts in Pews

March 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Looking to invest your IRA in companies that take few risks while promising steady, if slow, growth? Just count the churches around company headquarters. That’s the conclusion of two accounting professors in Hong Kong whose recent study reveals that publicly traded companies in the U.S. are less likely to take financial risks — but more likely to grow, albeit slowly — when churchgoing and other measures of religiosity are high within the community where top management is based. Warren Buffett made headlines in late February commenting on how public companies should manage risk, ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, CAROUSEL, Culture, Culture & Society
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Memo to Coach: Stick With What You’ve Got

January 11, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

In what's surely a global pastime, played out as loudly in the bars of Brooklyn as the pubs of North London, sports fans bewail the lack of loyalty in professional sports, as evidenced by ever-changing rosters and inflated egos that bounce from city to city chasing the highest bidder. In the age of free agency, players are commodities, bought, sold and traded like any investment. The payoff — and fans expect one, the hell with loyalty — is a better shot at the title and the riches that come with it. But a new study of top professional soccer teams in Europe is challenging the wisdom ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Who Needs God When We’ve Got Mammon?

November 24, 2009 • By • 21 Comments

From Dostoyevsky to right-wing commentator Ann Coulter we are warned of the perils of godlessness. "If there is no God," Dostoyevsky wrote, "everything is permitted." Coulter routinely attributes our nation's most intractable troubles to the moral vacuum of atheism. But a growing body of research in what one sociologist describes as the "emerging field of secularity" is challenging long-held assumptions about the relationship of religion and effective governance. In a paper posted recently on the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, independent researcher Gregory S. Paul reports a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society
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Building a Better Citizen

November 2, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

In the late 1980s, Hampton, Va., faced the challenges of many blue-collar cities along its stretch of the southern Chesapeake: rising unemployment, a stagnant economy and the flight of young families to seek better jobs and fuller lives elsewhere. City leaders gambled on a novel response. They would target young people, hoping to cultivate a generation of citizens committed to Hampton's long-term vitality. In 1990, the city launched Hampton Youth Civic Engagement, a program to instill community pride and leadership skills in young people and engage them in governance. The program was ... Read More

More like this: Magazine Feature Story, November-December 2009, Politics
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Calming the Storm That Spawns School Shooters

March 11, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

School shooters, the author of a new book argues, are driven by a toxic mix of adolescent angst and personality disorder. Easing the pain and spotting the warning signs offer the best hope for preventing the next tragedy. School rampage killings are not a uniquely American phenomenon (Finland has had two horrific cases in recent memory), but the complex set of psychological and sociological conditions that spawn such events are far more likely to spring from the modern suburban landscape in the U.S. Though ultimately rare, cases of school shootings are on the rise, says Yeshiva ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, Education
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