It is reputed that Sigmund Freud died asking this question: What do women want? Everything, I suppose. This week, I discovered one surprisingly specific answer.
If I could take a pill that achieved the effects of daily exercise, I would. But my desire for a hale and limber golden age easily trumps my indolence, so [...]
Shame seems to be a driving force in American politics these days. The Europeans have managed to shame us into ending many of the secret deals on that continent that established sites for “extraordinary rendition,” defined as the incarceration and interrogation of unindicted, untried suspects in the “War on Terror.” (Unfortunately, CIA “black sites” and [...]
Next week is Passover, celebrating the liberation from slavery in Egypt described in the biblical book of Exodus. Like all Jewish holidays, it is a reminder. As we remove the chametz (leavened bread and similar foods not eaten during the holiday season) from our homes, we also search our souls, digging out whatever is puffed-up [...]
Yesterday’s New York Times reported on a study the Center on Education Policy will release tomorrow. The article’s headline says it all: “Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math.”
CEP found that since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, “71 percent of the nation’s 15,000 school districts had reduced the hours [...]
A kind reader sent me information on a revealing psychological study at Emory University reported in the 22 June 2005 issue of the professional journal Biological Psychiatry. Subjects were asked to make simple determinations (e.g., which line is longer, which shape is the same?). Without social pressure, the answers would have been obvious. But the [...]
One unintended side-benefit of the recent orgy of censorship by the Federal Communications Commission has been the giggle of hearing all-grown-up journalists and lawyers pontificating on the news about “the S-word” and “the F-word.” When a coward like myself has to cover her eyes often during prime time to avoid close-ups of gunshot wounds and [...]
Consider the tale of DP World, Dubai’s state-owned company trying to spend almost $7 billion to buy a company that operates port terminals around the world, a few of which are in the U.S.A.
This morning’s New York Times tells us that President Bush was shocked—I say, shocked— at the breadth and intensity of objections from [...]
Two of my readers have given me a lot to think about. They wrote comments on my February 12th blog, “The Fashion in Outrage,” about controversies over art. It contrasted Americans’ huge response to recent domestic literary scandals with our inertia with respect to political ones.
From Israel:
The fact that “tout le monde” is more [...]
My friend was fulminating about the Bushies: “So their lies are piling up, a huge pile of deceit, and what can we do about it? We just have to sit it out till the next election? Why aren’t people up in arms?” (Maureen Dowd’s Saturday Times column has a good compilation of recent lies, if [...]
It’s funny how certain things stick in your mind. Before Powerpuff Girls stickers, bath mats, T-shirts, wristwatches, PJs, Gameboys, backpacks, books…—before the vast economic potential of product tie-ins were more than a gleam in Hollywood’s eye—Saturday morning kids’ TV was an unvarying stream of cartoon shorts first shown in the interstices of the Saturday matinee [...]
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