I Think, Therefore I Wonder: Should I Keep My Mouth Shut?

So, today an Undecided reader tipped me off to an interesting read over at TheFrisky, entitled “Why Being Called ‘An Opinionated Woman’ Hurts.” Writer Chloe Angyal sets the scene: Last weekend, I was hanging out with a male friend who I’ll call Stan. Over the course of our convo, he brought up a mutual friend [...]

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I’m A Mess; You’re A Mess

Or, as Wavy Gravy put it, we’re all just bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. That’s all well and good in theory (and coming from the man who gave brown acid a bad name–and ice cream a good one), but who wants to admit to being [...]

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Happiness is Getting Old

Here’s a little good news for anyone who’s getting older (yeah, Peter Pan, that includes you): a recent Gallup poll has found that as people get older, they get happier. You read that right. And I know, such a finding runs counter to the results of countless other studies and anecdotal asides. Not to mention [...]

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Raised By Wolves

Weren’t we all? I came across that line Wednesday in a piece by Maureen Dowd, who quoted Michelle Obama as saying that her husband had spent so much time alone growing up that it was as if he had been raised by wolves. Love that phrase, don’t you? Think about it and you realize that, [...]

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I Don’t Wanna Grow Up

… and according to a recent New York Times piece (that, as fate would have it, ran on Friday, a big birthday for yours truly; big enough to officially bump me from one age range box to the next, in fact) neither do you. Surely by now you’ve heard the phrase “extended adolescence”. And whether [...]

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Four Years of College For, Um, This?

You bet your mortarboard. Stick with us, you’ll find out why. But first, backstory: Last month, New York Times writer David Leonhardt slapped the debate about the value of our American college-for-all ethos smack-dab on our collective kitchen table. Ever since, knickers have been in a bundle all across the interwebs as readers, reporters, students, [...]

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This Is Your Brain on Cybercrack

So. Remember that old anti-drug television commercial that shouted out: Here’s your brain on drugs — then showed an egg sunny-side up, sizzling in a frying pan? Well, these days, the sizzler is the internet, as in uber-connection. And the result is less like fried eggs than a scramble, according to a piece in the [...]

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“Hollywood and The Curse of the Double X”

If it sounds like the above could be the title of a horror flick, well, you’re not far off. I came across the following bit of clever repartee between Mick LaSalle, our often irreverent film critic, and a loyal reader in our local paper this Sunday and was suddenly loaded for bear. I feel obliged [...]

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Feminism Needs Sarah Palin Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

Guess who’s calling herself a feminist? I’ll give you a hint: she doesn’t read much but cooks a mean moose chili, and while she isn’t a big fan of hopey changey stuff, she has been known to engage in such enlightened chants as “Drill, baby, drill.” (Though she’s been conspicuously quiet on that subject as [...]

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