How to Plan a Wedding Without Losing Your Mind

Heidi Kurpiela was never big on weddings. “I never paged through bridal magazines in line at the grocery store. I never ached to be a bride.” But even a no-frills attitude didn't save her from the maelstrom of wedding planning, she writes on The Stimulist. Herewith some lessons learned as she saw herself turning into the obsessive bride she was sure she would never be be:

You can buy the dress alone: it doesn’t have to be a weepy or expensive undertaking. It can be as simple as running to the supermarket for a half-gallon of milk.”
You will be intimidated into hand writing your guests’ addresses: Get over it. Apparently easy-to-read computer generated ones are in bad taste.
You must buy a cake serving set: Kurpiela suggests whatever you find marked down at Pier 1.
CC your bridesmaids on all shoe-related e-mails: Kurpiela accidentally told one bridesmaid to buy gold, another to buy brown. Whoops.
You will register for things you will regret. Going through the store with the scanner sent "cold chills of gluttonous consumerism" down her spine. You can edit the next day.
You can break tradition: The internet is brimming with good ideas for DIY touches. There need be no rules.

Get a Checkup or Lose Your Insurance

How far can a firm go to improve the health of its employees? AmeriGas Propane's insurance costs were rising, its work force was aging, and its employees weren't getting preventative care. The company began voluntary programs to encourage healthy behavior that didn't work. So AmeriGas gave its workers a simple choice last year: Get regular check-ups, or lose your health insurance, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The ultimatum seems to have worked; AmeriGas has seen more than 90% of workers get their exams, and the checkups have uncovered early-stage diabetes, cancer, and liver disease the employees admit would’ve otherwise gone undetected. And because AmeriGas doesn’t require that any action be taken based on the results, the firm is not in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. But whether the program works remains to be seen: The company's health costs were 3% higher than they would have been without it last year, due to the cost of additional exams and care.

Colleges Encourage 'Gap Year' With Cash

Colleges around the country are making it easier for high school graduates to delay college and instead put in a year or more of public service, the Christian Science Monitor reports. More than 80 schools have partnered with AmeriCorps to give students tuition credits in exchange for such service. Others, such as Princeton and Dickinson, have their own versions, figuring the payoff will be more well-rounded students.

"We're seeing an upsurge nationally in the number of students looking for alternatives immediately following high school graduation,” says an administrator at Dickinson College, which offers a $10,000 tuition credit for every year of public service.

New Site Targets Chattering (and Now Tweeting) Classes

There's been lots of media chatter about Mediaite.com, the website Dan Abrams rolled out this morning, most of it sight-unseen, challenging the former MSNBC host's intention to continue to run a media strategy firm alongside the site. Howard Kurtz, one of those critics, now takes a look at the site, which offering a sassy, scandal-fueled take on print, TV, and the net. One prominent feature is a ranking of media types which may fuel vanity but be of questionable utility, Kurtz notes on finding that he is apparently more influential than Conan O'Brien.

Mediaite is run by a lean team of just five, and Abrams has stumped up all the cash for the launch. Its editor, Rachel Sklar, promises a "super-fun" approach to "where the media are going," with remunerated contributors alongside unpaid bloggers. Yet concerns about the site's impartiality remain, Kurtz says; Abrams has not disclosed his consultancy's clients, and media blogger Jeff Jarvis told him, "I'm sorry, but this smells."

Twitter Deserves a Nobel Prize

Twitter’s been so instrumental in giving Iranians a voice that it, and its creators, deserve Nobel Prize consideration, writes Mark Pfeifle for the Christian Science Monitor. Scoff all you want at the 140-character “time waster.” “In the past month, 140 characters were enough to shine a light on Iranian oppression and elevate Twitter to the level of change agent.”

When traditional journalists were forced out of the country, Twitter gave the people a voice. Beaming tweets from cellphones to the whole world—instead of just a friends list—it became the tool the regime couldn't suppress. Its crowning achievement was to give the world the video of Neda Agha Soltan, dying on the street for daring to dream of a free Iran. “Neda became the voice of a movement,” writes Pfeifle. “Twitter became the megaphone.”

Economic 'Mismatches' Mean Food Crisis Is Here to Stay

The various sectors of the global economy have become so entwined with food production that prices are acting in a very “puzzling” manner, the Economist reports. Last year, the market responded rationally to the global food crisis of 2007-08, increasing production and thus lowering prices. But with another bumper crop expected, prices are up, “increasing at a time of plenty.”

The response to the food crisis isn’t just troubling academically. Farmers responded by putting more land into cultivation, a practice that cannot hope to meet skyrocketing demand. More, production increased overwhelmingly in industrialized nations, depriving poor countries that consume most of the produce of potential fruits of their labor: “The spike of 2008 did not signal a mere bubble—but rather, a genuine mismatch of supply and demand.”

Ex-Autoworkers Retool for Lower Paying Jobs

Hundreds of thousands of ex-autoworkers left adrift by the industry's implosion are having to learn new skills and get used to lower pay, the Washington Post reports. Community colleges in the auto industry's heartland are jam-packed with midlife workers aiming to qualify quickly to become truck drivers, computer technicians or nursing aides. "I've been humbled quite a bit," says one 39-year-old autoworker-turned-nursing aide who's living in his mother's basement.

"What we're seeing is the death of the conventional middle-class life and an increase in the population of working poor," says the president of one Detroit community college. Some in new careers are enjoying the feeling of job security, despite the withered pay packets. "Of course, 20 years ago, people thought the auto industry would always be solid," says the new nursing aide. "But, for now, I feel good about it."