Christopher Orlet
The headline from the morning paper read: “Amy Winehouse Dead: Why Did No One Help Her?” I never heard Amy Winehouse perform, but I had certainly heard of Amy Winehouse. Her name was part of the incessant pop cultural din…
These days everyone who is anyone must have a fashionable cause. You simply cannot be a successful entertainer or athlete without one. It is not enough to bring joy to someone’s life for an hour or two with your stand-up…
Crazy U: One Dad’s Crash Course in Getting his Kid into CollegeBy Andrew Ferguson(Simon & Schuster, 228 pages, $25) For a majority of Americans a college degree remains the first-class ticket to the Good Life. The pathway to opportunity. The…
On their recent visit to Southern California, Prince William and wife Catherine and about 1,300 bodyguards toured Skid Row. Nothing too unusual about that. We expect British monarchs-in-training to spend an hour or two slumming it when they visit their…
For months we’ve been reading about hacker groups like Lulz Security who reportedly have no agenda other than to create mayhem and laugh-snort at their own clever online exploits. The media were quick to romanticize LulzSec, christening them “keyboard anarchists”…
They say boys are easier to raise than girls. I can believe it. Boys generally do not wake up their father’s from their after-dinner nap to ask if they can go on a SlutWalk. Nor do fathers of teenage boys…
Social scientists for decades have sought to explain the dogged persistence of poverty. The received wisdom is the poor are passive victims who would like nothing better than to exchange their hoodies and droopy drawers for the Polos and plaid…
Few lives can be condensed to a half dozen paragraphs. Yet that is exactly what the obituary writer must do everyday. For years I wrote death notices for a small rural newspaper. The vast majority of these departures failed to…
Here’s something you don’t read everyday: “Putting People in Jail Does Not Lower the Crime Rate.” Unless you are a subscriber to The Nation or a visitor to the MSNBC website. Then you probably do read that every day, or something equally…
Because the apocalypse stubbornly failed to arrive Saturday evening, I had to report for training first thing Monday morning. It wasn’t just me; all employees were to be trained to use the new content management system. The new system promised…
