Everyone’s talking about the wrong thing.  The Prop 8 trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger recently concluded in a flurry of punditry that had little if anything to do with the case.  While most media personalities spent their time aimlessly speculating or just provoking controversy, anyone who wants to...

My mother-in-law’s first gift to us as an engaged couple was a culinary torch.  Talk about intimidating!  It may as well have been a ratcheting box wrench; I had no idea people used torches in the kitchen.  My grandmother was a model and showgirl.  When my mom left home, she didn’t even know...

The small towns of America’s heartland are becoming an endangered species, argue researchers Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas in Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America—a lengthy title for a slim and troubling ethnography. In a nation where urban studies...

Senator Charles Schumer cares a lot about the milk your children drink- why else would he want to make sure you to buy only the most expensive baby bottles and sippy cups on the market? I’ve written before (here and here) about the BPA controversies – now, thanks to Senator Schumer,...

“Happily unmarried” is the new catchphrase for couples who have long term monogamous relationships, often with children, but without tying the knot. This makes sense when a Christian concept of marriage no longer has any real cultural currency, and when even the social mores held over...

Amy Wallace’s essay “An Epidemic of Fear,” published in this month’s issue of Wired, is both perceptive and worrying. Wired’s articles often comment on the growing debates between social groups and professional communities. This month’s feature focuses on the conflict between anti-vaccination...

Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gilead, returns to Gilead, Iowa in her latest novel, Home (2008). Though the events of Home run concurrent with Gilead, Home stands wonderfully in its own right. The narrative voice belongs to tenderhearted Glory Boughton, thirty-eight, who has recently...

In a bizarre twist that reminds one of Scrooge rather than Schwarzenegger, the state of California decided last spring to significantly reduce its dependent tax credit.  In other words, it just became even more difficult to raise future California tax payers. California parents can no longer count on...

Fear sells.  No one knows this better than advertisers, whose aggressive marketing content is unconsciously absorbed by millions of consumers who don’t – or can’t – think critically about what advertisers tell them. That’s why it’s such a shame when advertisers and...

“I don’t know.” This was the advice Dr. Mark Mercurio, director of the Yale Pediatric Ethics program, gave to a room full of Yale University bioethics students in a lecture on how neonatologists should find their way through ethical quandaries. It is not that he is unqualified. Quite...