Seattle, Starbucks and Crime

Last week, Starbucks announced that it was permanently closing 16 locations due to crime concerns, five of which are located in their headquarter city of Seattle. They aren’t the only business experiencing higher than average crime. After a string of armed robberies...

Who Will Pay for Medicare?

In a classic good news/bad news scenario, the recently released Social Security and Medicare trustees report says that the funds won’t be going broke quite as quickly as feared. The bad news, of course, is that a deferral of the inevitable by a year or two doesn’t...

The NCAA Needs a Geographer

If you’ve been watching March Madness, then you may have noticed that there is something absolutely mad about the tournament. They section the tournament into four regions: West, East, South and Midwest. As geographers, we encourage this strategy. But how they come up...
The Real Price of Gold

The Real Price of Gold

If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you have likely seen a commercial where a young girl watches Olympian Elana Meyers Taylor on TV with a glimmer in her eye that she, too, could be a gold medalist one day. The Olympics make us think that anyone can represent their...