I recently watched a fascinating documentary jointly broadcast on the Sundance Channel and Court TV. The Human Behavior Experiments was directed by Alex Gibney (who also made the excellent Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room). Now I can’t stop thinking about it. In the compass of an hour, Gibney and his collaborators touched down …
First, a disclaimer. At no time did I personally utter this sentence: “Never trust anyone over 30.” (FYI, it was coined by Jack Weinberg, whose 1964 arrest for violating prohibitions against political advocacy on the UC Berkeley campus ignited the Free Speech Movement, and who—at 65 or so—is still a dedicated environmental activist, having had …
Once again, I’ve been given an opportunity to visit another world, the strange and exotic land of teen culture. I’ve been assisting the New York-based organization Global Kids by reading and writing about 133 essays by high school students on how digital media affects their lives. You can download my report, read the essays and …
There is no more powerful reminder that something has value than to see another risk everything to embrace it. Brave immigrants have been marching this week through my memories, reminding me that the essence of human freedom is to stand and be counted. My ancestors have been immigrants much longer than I know or can …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The most wonderful thing has come into my life: a new Powerbook laptop. My friend, who’s not a Mac person, inherited it from a friend of his, and generously (miraculously!) passed it on to me. Among its many benefits is that I am now using the newest operating system, which has led me through portals …