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topics: culture
The wine cellar as confrontation with mortality.
One of the essential appeals of "laying down" wine is that you can buy it when it is young and relatively inexpensive, after which it ...
Ways in which the generation gap has never been wider
The 60's divide between the generations had an anti-authoritarian aspect that was very personal. Parents felt under attack and probably were. That aspect of the ...
- topics: culture
Why bilinguals are smarter
A staff writer for Science, Y. Bhattacharjee, reported in the NY Times (March 18, 2012) on research into the positive effects of juggling two languages. ...
- topics: culture
The Mexican view of race
Eduardo Porter, who describes himself as "the son of a tallish, white father from Chicago and a short, brown Mexican mother of European and Indian ...
- topics: culture
Does an originial manuscript impart more than a digitized copy–or not?
 James Gleick (The Information: A History of Theory, a Flood) has written about books themselves as fetishized objects in a NY Times op-ed piece. He ...
- topics: culture
Why aren’t friendships made on the trail sustained?
The 2010 film, The Way, starring Martin Sheen and written and produced by his son Emilio Estevez, is not a good film. The characters are ...
- topics: culture
What is the red/blue divide really all about?
 To many liberals, conservatives seem not just wrong but incomprehensible and often deluded, if not demented. Nicholas Kristof, in an interesting column in the March ...
- topics: culture
Has the generation gap morphed into the red and blue divide?
Is it possible that the need to define oneself in opposition to something has shifted to the current political divide? Many founders of the most ...
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topics: culture
Where has the “generation gap” gone?
Hippie gurus and tie-dyed bell-bottoms are history. The police are no longer pigs. Crunchy granola has lost its claim on virtue. Has the generation gap ...
If optimism is hard-wired, what do we do when it imperils us?
Al Gore and many others who are spearheading the fight against climate change emphasize that it is not too late. They try not to engage ...
‘Butterfly’ as linguistic anomaly: why?
The most interesting essay on the subject comes from William O. Beeman, of the Dept of Anthropolgy, Brown University, 2000: The Elusive Butterfly. He notes ...
- topics: culture
Are we hard-wired for optimism?
This posting about a new book, "The Optimism Bias," by Tali Sharot, appeared on BrainPickings.com, February 26, 2012. The book argues that optimism is an ...
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topics: art, culture, nature
What is the imaginative lure of the jungle?
Henri Rousseau was a tax collector and self-taught painter who never left Paris and never saw a jungle, taking inspiration instead from Paris’ hothouse ...
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topics: culture, family
Why do children prefer a facsimile to the real thing?
Is it because it offers a sense of control over a frighteningly diverse world? Of course, it isn't only children who can't resist a simulacrum. ...