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Last Monday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” broadcast an interesting feature about prejudice. Reporter Shankar Vedantam spoke of a professor discovering that people treat members of their own racial, religious, social or professional communities better than those outside them. This takes a Ph.D.? And what does it really mean? According to Vedantam, a Yale professor suffered…
How fast do news stories change? Last night, I had a draft of this post ready to go. It included comments about the Boston Marathon bombings. This morning, I had to start over. I had written: “You can imagine a number of likely suspects, foreign and domestic, in general terms, but the investigation demands time…
Words can offend. One starts with “C.” But we need to talk more about it because given the nature of the world we live in it’s more relevant than ever. Compromise gets some people riled up. The word suggests a lack of integrity and morality. These folks believe they’re always right and opposing views are…
Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard an appeal against California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. If the arguments for Prop 8 hold weight, the court’s decision—if it doesn’t dismiss the case and renders one in June—may force my wife and I to divorce. First, a disclosure. We have a gay son. A married gay…
The first night of Passover (Pesach) arrives tonight, March 25. (I write this post now because I was in Phoenix over the weekend.) Of great note, with the exception of Chanukah (the Christmas influence) more Jews attend some sort of Seder than observe any other holiday, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur included. Why? Why indeed.…
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), written according to tradition by Solomon, exclaims, “There is nothing new beneath the sun” (1:9). True that. Ultimately, what goes around comes around—as it did this past week. Yes, technology races forward. Solomon could not have dreamed of the printing press and steam engine let alone the high-energy particle telescope, smart phone, Internet…
The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the city of Detroit and I all share a common link. Chavez and me? In my novel San Café, the would-be socialist strongman of fictional San Cristo, Jesús Garcia-Vega, idolizes Chavez. Both reject the accumulation of private wealth. Chavez redistributed much wealth to the poor. In doing so, he…
The sheriff admitted that the county had too much road to cover. The department had been cut way back. Federal money wasn’t flowing to the state like it used to. Funding for counties and municipalities was drying up. Yet those crazy kids kept finding new ways to kill themselves. The sheriff knew a thing or…
Something odd is going on in San Francisco. The vast majority of upwardly mobile young parents seem to have given their sons the same name. It’s spooky. With all the names available—from Adam, Bob and Charles to Xavier, Yoel and Zachary—almost every small boy answers to Buddy. I first thought parents were honoring old-time celebrities.…