Christmas Specials

GOOFS

We woz wrong

Newspapers are quick to crow about their predictive triumphs. But what about when they are wrong? The editor of The Economist owns up to our recent, er, disappointments and explains why forecasts are so often wrong

LATIN AMERICAN GAYS

Living la vida loca

Latin America has imported the notion of “gay pride” from the United States, just as it has imported fashions and fast-food chains. But it is still a region where men are macho, women are long-suffering, Catholicism dominates, and the family reigns supreme. Our reporter embarked on a personal odyssey to discover what this complex cultural mix means for Latin American gays

PRIVACY

Living in the global goldfish bowl

Once private eyes had to spend long hours in “stake-outs”, to rummage in dustbins, and to knock on neighbour’s doors to find out anything about their targets. But, as our reporter discovered, in today’s wired world, they rarely even have to leave their desks

Sui genocide

The human species might yet fulfill its evolutionary potential, if it would only go away

ASK DR TATIANA

Sex is war!

In her inaugural column, The Economist’s sex adviser explains to puzzled lovers why the battle of the sexes is much more than a metaphor

BY INVITATION: FAVOURITE HOTELS

Somewhere special to stay

Tired of ho-hum hosts and boring bedrooms, we asked Caroline Raphael—editor and co-owner of “The Good Hotel Guide”*—to tell us her likes and dislikes about European hotels, and to reveal some of her favourites

1897 AND 1997

The century the earth stood still

True, we have aeroplanes, medicines and microchips. But is today’s world really so very different from the world of 100 years ago?

MODERN ROYALISTS

Monarchs and mountebanks

Snobbery, sentiment, or the scent of power? What makes claimants to royal thrones, and their supporters, pursue their unlikely cause?

THE DIAMOND BUSINESS

Glass with attitude

The preciousness of the diamond is perhaps the world’s most sophisticated illusion—a feat of marketing more dazzling than the gem itself

FUN WITH FUNGI

Those magical mushrooms

What grows in the dark forests of Anglo-Saxon paranoia? Fungus, of course. Yet even Anglos are discovering the delights of wild mushrooms, and about time too

GOLFONOMICS

Asia in the rough

Many explanations have been advanced as to what went wrong with the East Asian miracle. Most of them can be summed up in one four-letter word: golf

BANANAS

Expelled from Eden

After decades of cosy protection, the banana growers of the Caribbean must reinvent themselves for a world market that has left them behind. Protectionism is never so cruel as when it ends