When “The Beach” hit American cinemas just over 10 years ago, most of the hype surrounding the movie centered on its star, Leonard DiCaprio, and its director, Danny Boyle. Scant media attention was given to the movie’s core themes, which drew on Alex Garland’s 1996 novel of the same name about a community of Western backpackers veering its way into self-destruction on an anonymous Thai island. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
How did play get to be so much work? We New York mothers ask ourselves this question every fall, for while school gets our children out from underfoot, their menu of weekend and after-school activities turns us into full-time social secretaries. We could, of course, put the children in regular after-school programs, and many do. But if we don’t. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
“You have to understand,” says Peggy, who at 54 is given to exasperation about her husband’s more exotic ideas. “I am a hospice social worker. I work with people who are dying all the time. I see people dying All. The. Time. And what’s so good about me that I’m going to live forever?” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
There was a day a few weeks ago when I found my 2½-year-old son sitting on our building doorstep, waiting for me to come home. He spotted me as I was rounding the corner, and the scene that followed was one of inexpressible loveliness, right out of the movie I’d played to myself before actually having a child, with him popping out of his babysitter’s arms and barreling down the street to greet me. This happy moment, though, was about to be cut short, and in retrospect felt more like a tranquil lull in a slasher film. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Fans of sports underdogs have had an amazing run these past few months. In February, the New Orleans Saints won their first-ever Super Bowl, an upset victory over the invincible Colts.. At the beginning of April, a little-known college from the Midwest made it to the NCAA basketball title game against the hated Blue Devils. And more recently, the Oklahoma City Thunder very nearly forced the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers to a seventh game in the first round of the NBA playoffs. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Buy my food at Walmart? No thanks. Until recently, I had been to exactly one Walmart in my life, at the insistence of a friend I was visiting in Natchez, Mississippi, about 10 years ago. It was one of the sights, she said. Up and down the aisles we went, properly impressed by the endless rows and endless abundance. Not the produce section. I saw rows of prepackaged, plastic-trapped fruits and vegetables. I would never think of shopping there. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
For most of Winter 2007, I was in Canada’s Northwest Territory, in a series of small towns about two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. After twelve years of freelance writing, I have either traveled for work or traveled while between jobs, and I’ve been a few places around the world — Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, most of Europe. But the Arctic is nothing like the world that I’ve seen. It’s more like pictures of the moon. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Without trying, it was an intense, proud community, in which no one locked their doors. Calthorpe looked for the element of design magic that made it work, and concluded it was the dock itself and the density. Everyone who lived in the houseboats on South 40 Dock passed each other on foot daily, trundling to and from the parking lot on shore. All the residents knew each other’s faces and voices and cats. It was a community, Calthorpe decided, because it was walkable. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that “spatial mobility” would increase, and, as it did, feed an inexorable trend toward rootlessness and anomie. Yet in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic. As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census starting following movement in 1940. That’s good news for families, communities and even the environment. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Kim Kardashian has practically made a living off her curvaceous figure. But the E! network celeb was looking a little less shapely in Complex magazine in April, her body reduced about a dress size, her legs smoothed to near-perfection. How did readers know? Complex accidentally posted a pre-Photoshopped image of Kardashian on its website — before her thighs, arms and waist had been digitally sculpted. In a matter of hours the photo was gone. But in that brief time span, those who spotted it got a little reminder that we should think twice about taking photographs at face value. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
After all the arguments for subordinating women have been shown to be self-serving lies, what are misogynists left with? They have only one feeble argument that is still deferred to and shown undeserving respect across the world, even by people who should know better: “God told me to. I have to treat women as lesser beings, because it is inscribed in my Holy Book.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
“The East, the West, and Sex” is the best sort of book about sex: It is replete with anecdotes from history that titillate as they inform and observations on human nature that amuse as they illuminate, all delivered in language and tone that is broadly moral without being moralizing and certainly far from prudish. To his credit, Mr. Bernstein strives hard to avoid prurience, or even the suggestion of it, although occasionally he does drop his guard, as when he writes of Western men being “powerfully drawn to the slim, small-boned, black-haired women of Asia, more plumlike than melonlike of breast, spare rather than full of buttocks and hips.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
My children have been to the US each year since they were born, which is to say they’ve been eight times. For each of those years, Republicans were in office. It’s now well over 100 days since Democratic President Barack Obama was elected, promising change, so on this, their ninth trip, we’re keeping an eye out for what’s different. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
What is it with bores? I mean the sort of people who always have to hold the floor. They talk constantly at you, hurling their words like spears, each one tiny enough but nearly deadly in their collective effect. Almost all bores seem to have been born with, or to have developed, an amazing capacity: they can talk and take in air at the same time, so there’s never a moment to drop in your own two cents. On they go. They take no interest in you or anything about you; at best, you’re a stage prop in the one-person drama that they compose, produce, and star in. No one likes a bore so why do bores bore? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
“The freedom to breed is intolerable,” ecologist Garrett Hardin declared in his famous 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” I recently re-read Hardin’s call for population control, and this passage caught my attention: “We can make little progress in working toward optimum population size until we explicitly exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith in the field of practical demography.” Hardin specifically wanted to exorcize Smith’s claim in The Wealth of Nations that an individual who “intends only his own gain,” is, as it were, “led by an invisible hand to promote…the public interest.” <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In a bygone era of gray flannel suits and ad copy that read as sincerely as a minister’s sermon, masculine sanctuary within the realm of the family home came in three flavors: the study, the workshop, and the bar. Kids weren’t allowed in these places, not just because Dad needed some time away from the tiny demons who had sabotaged his dreams, but also because there was nothing for kids to do in these places. They were adult rooms where serious business transpired. The study was for drinking Scotch while pondering the works of Aristotle and Hugh Hefner. The workshop was for drinking beer while building a new doghouse or set of bookshelves. The bar was for drinking Mai Tais while flirting with the neighbor’s wife. Men have long enjoyed having a refuge in the home. But what grown one wants a man cave? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Marilyn vos Savant has had a unique claim to fame since the mid-1980s. It was then, almost 30 years after she took a test as a schoolgirl in downtown St Louis, Missouri, that her IQ came to light. In 1985, Guinness World Records accepted that she had answered every question correctly on an adult Stanford-Binet IQ test at the age of just 10, a result that gave her a corresponding mental age of 22 years and 11 months, and an unearthly IQ of 228. The resulting publicity changed Savant’s life. It led to the role for which she remains best known in America, writing a question-and-answer column. To her fans and other members of the world of high IQ, Savant is a prodigious, unusual talent who delights in solving problems. To her detractors, she is either trivial, someone who has squandered her gift, or proof, if they needed it, that IQ scores don’t add up to anything. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world. I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
I think I love my wife. At least most of the time. (Not counting when she makes me go see Henry Jaglom movies.) But what does that mean — I love my wife? And how does my love stack up against other husbands’? For the first time in the history of human mating, scientists may have found a way to pin down this most ethereal of emotions. We’re on the verge of dissecting this butterfly. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
You can’t fail to notice when flicking through the first 12 advertising campaigns of the May issue of US Vogue that they feature nothing but platinum-haired, blue-eyed goddesses. It’s a similar story on the pages of Grazia, British Elle and French Vogue. In the past few months, model agencies such as Premier and Storm have observed a significant increase in requests for blonde-haired, blue-eyed models, something they putdown to a fragile economy and grim financial climate. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Here is an anniversary which makes some of us feel old. It is 30 years - yes 30 years! - since the appearance of the first Sony Walkman. It is 30 years since we first got on a bus or a train and heard that infuriating tsst, tsst, tsst, tsst noise emanating from a wired-up earhole just behind us, 30 years since one section of the population became literally deaf to the existence of the other half. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong first met in school and then fell in love while living in the same dorm at the College of William and Mary. After graduation, they got married and, in 1999, moved to Washington, D.C., where they worked amid a large community of single and childless people. Like many in their late 20s, the couple began to seek something other than exciting careers and late-night outings with friends. “D.C. was terrific,” Moncure recalled over lunch near her office in lower Manhattan. It was an extension of college. But after a while, you want to get to a different ‘place.’” The ‘place’ Ellen and Joe looked for was not just a physical location but something less tangible: a sense of community and a neighborhood to raise their hoped-for children. Although they considered suburban locations, as most families do, ultimately they chose the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Joe had grown up. It seems that recently everyone has been talking about how young families are staying in the cities and revitalizing the city’s neighborhoods. The truth of migration patters tells another story. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world? Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels boring, bland and disconnected for weeks in his new country, Australia every time he goes back. With the recent elections having taken place in South Africa, it is time to examine this country I call home. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Actress Kate Winslet last week denied her middle-class roots by insisting she came from an impoverished, working-class background. Here, in the second of a series of essays on Britishness, the editor of GQ magazine, Dylan Jones, says enough is enough – and that it’s time to take pride in the middle-class values that have shaped Britain and the world in which we live. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Yes, Starbucks has come to Warsaw at last. The brand might be out of fashion in the States; the company might be losing money. Its shares might be worth a third of what they were at their peak in 2006; it might have diluted its once-exclusive image through massive overexpansion. (After drinking the watery brew served by a sullen barista in a Starbucks at the Salt Lake City airport recently, I mentally cheered the chain’s decision to shut down 600 U.S. shops.) But here in Central Europe, the arrival of Starbucks has been greeted with undiluted enthusiasm — so much enthusiasm, in fact, that the phenomenon seems to require further explanation. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. “Trite as it sounds,” he told me, it seemed important to “maybe appreciate my own youth.” Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
The Jerusalem Post wrote a two piece series on what Israelis and Palestinians teach their young. Part I discusses some of the problematic issues in textbooks and curriculum including those dealing with history as “there is little or no chance that Israelis and Palestinians will share the same understandings and interpretation of the history of the land and the conflict of its people.” Part II discusses who will stand up to the challenge of teaching peace. Both peoples have struggled for their freedom and liberation. Students therefore know that their history is an essential element of collection nation building and in defining their identity. However, as education is a powerful agent of change and socialization into society’s values, it sometimes also acts as a transmitter of conflict-producing and conflict-sustaining myths. How then will a systematic educational approach be created that teaches conflict-solving values and skills and brings together Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students, on equal footing, to encourage discussion, and empower both sides at the same time? <<<To read Part I of the series, click here.>>> | <<<To read Part II of the series, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
It’s a terrible thing to come to terms with, but I am the reason the world is in an economic tailspin. Me, alone. All those foreclosures, short sales, bank failures, job losses, bailouts, plummeting stocks, the ripple effect into Europe, China, even Madoff: all my fault. Moi. That last house I sold at 253 Carrington Way? That was the tipping point, I’m convinced. I sold it for $657,500 in August 2005, and now Zillow is damning it at $537,000. I would weep to call the owners now and say, hey, want a market analysis? Sound like fun? I know, you’d rather shove shards of glass under your fingernails, I hear you. All I wanted was a good job I couldn’t lose. I didn’t realize I’d end up bringing down the global economy. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
So what is making us seek out fear? Is it the whoosh of adrenaline flooding our brains? For men like Martin Ollerenshaw it’s more a reaction to our sedentary society. Previous generations have not needed to look far for danger. We have only to pick up the war poems of Wilfred Owenor Siegfried Sassoon to see that they might have welcomed the mundane and routine. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Pastors preach of a Jesus that wants us to be rich. The famously egocentric wide receiver Terrell Owens declares at a press conference that being labeled selfish is fine with him. Donald Trump names everything he owns after himself and calls his detractors “losers.” We live in a world where everyone can be a star—if only on YouTube. Well, you may need a supersize ego to win “America’s Next Top Model” or to justify your multimillion dollar bonus. But last I checked, most of our lives don’t require all that attitude. Treating the whole world as if it works for you doesn’t suggest you’re special, it means you’re an ass. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
A mother tells her child that Häagen Dazs is a special medicine for mommies because she doesn’t want to share. Another purposely ruins her daughter’s favorite T-shirt with red nail polish. One joins Weight Watchers so she has a place to go by herself once a week. Another mom admits, “I can’t wait to wean my daughter so I can get stoned again.” Are bloggers who proudly identify as “bad moms” challenging ideals of motherhood or reinforcing them? <<<To read article, click here.>>> |
Show me what scares you, and I will show you your subconscious leeching out into the world. Every culture – every person – imagines there are terrors waiting for us in the dark: the shape of the monsters changes from year to year, but the fear remains. Man, it seems, needs dread and circuses. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
A specter is haunting Russia today. It is not the specter of Communism—that ghost has been chained in the attic of the past—but rather of depopulation—a relentless, unremitting, and perhaps unstoppable depopulation. The mass deaths associated with the Communist era may be history, but another sort of mass death may have only just begun, as Russians practice what amounts to a vodka ethnic self-cleansing. <<<To read article, click here.>>>
“The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure you in telling you it’s one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it’s a medieval dictatorship.” <<<To read article, click here.>>>
