Civil rights and baseball? Think Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947. But what about civil rights and baseball today? Dave Zirin thinks there’s plenty going on and plenty to talk about. Zirin writes for Sports Illustrated, has a weekly sports-related satellite radio program, and is sports editor for The Nation, where this column first appeared …
Continue reading Bud Selig’s Base on Balls: Dave Zirin on Baseball’s Civil Rights Game
Are you easily distracted while read…Oh, wait, is that my phone beeping?…Sorry, now, where were we? Oh, yes, distraction and reading. Johann Hari is as enamored with technology as anyone else, but he argues that we need books in order stay connected to our true selves. Hari is an award-winning British journalist and columnist who …
Continue reading A Sturdy Case for the Book: Johann Hari on Surviving the Age of Distraction
Summer has arrived, and the produce aisles and farmers’ markets are brimming with fresh items. Is there anything new and different where you shop or dine? Have you tried a taste? New York-based author Riddhi Shah writes about food-related issues for Salon, The Atlantic, the Huffington Post, and other periodicals. In this 2010 Slate article, …
Continue reading Faddy Food in the U.S.A.: Riddhi Shah, “Why Is America So Fixed on Food Fads?”
How would you like to have 27 paid holidays every year along with six weeks’ paid vacation? What changes would you be willing to make in your life in order to enjoy such benefits? Social commentator and poet Katha Pollitt sets her insightful gaze to Europe in this essay that appeared in September 2010 in …
Continue reading Greener Grass, More Paid Holidays: Katha Pollitt, “It’s better over there”
Do you shop for the lowest prices on the items you buy? What do your shopping habits have to do with the statue of a former first lady in a New York City park? This May 2011 article from the blog Manhattan User’s Guide (MUG) focuses on a monument to Eleanor Roosevelt in Manhattan and …
Continue reading Shopping with Eleanor: Eleanor Roosevelt on WalMart
Lisa Miller, award-winning journalist, is a religion editor for Newsweek, where she has worked since 2000. Her 2010 book, Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife, is a history and personal memoir on the idea of life after death. In this article, she tackles a more down-to-earth situation: access to adequate nutrition in a nation …
Continue reading Hungering for Equality: Lisa Miller on Food and Class in the U.S.
MG Siegler’s snarky title frames an ongoing drama in which we are all actors, willing or otherwise; day by day we redefine our relationships and our lives with new technologies. Siegler is a San Francisco-based journalist whose work appears frequently on TechCrunch, an online technology-oriented news source, blog, and information hub. He is a frequent …
You’re a college student; this one will likely hit close to home. How do you feel about your future on the other side of graduation? Matthew C. Klein, a research associate with the Council on Foreign Relations, describes the harsh realities facing some recent graduates and makes possibly unsettling comparisons with similar populations in other …
Continue reading Rising up by Degrees: “Educated, Unemployed, and Frustrated” in the New York Times
We all know that the U.S. economy is hobbling along, and it’s also no surprise that some segments of the population are better off than others. Yet the tables and charts compiled by political journalists Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot for Mother Jones demonstrate with painful clarity the disparities between the rich and the un-rich …
Continue reading Mother Jones Takes a Peek at the Economy: “It’s the Inequality, Stupid”
Steven Pinker, distinguished Harvard University professor, is one of very few linguists known outside of the discipline, and his five books written for a general audience have all been big hits. How the mind works was a New York Times bestseller in 1998 and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, as was his 2003 book, …
Continue reading Your Brain on Media: Steven Pinker’s “Mind Over Mass Media”
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