“I’m not thinking the way I used to think,” Nicholas Carr laments in his provocative essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (The Atlantic, July 2008). “I have this uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping my circuitry, reprogramming my memory.” Book author Carr suggests his mind isn’t so much going as it is changing,…
Funny how the level of defiance and indignation that public figures exhibit in denial of bad behavior directly correlates with the likelihood of guilt. A sampling of the legion of perpetrators includes: President Bill Clinton wagged his finger and proclaimed, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!” Only to eventually fess up, “Indeed I did have a relationship…
Here’s a New Year’s resolution for the ages, all ages. Let’s resolve to make aging cool — in both perception and reality. It’s a daunting task, one that will most likely take beyond this year, if not a generation. But we need to move quickly and deliberately, before aging completely devolves into novelty acts and parodies of once vital lives….
“There are lies, damned lies and statistics,” Mark Twain famously warned. The misrepresentation of statistics is sport in American culture, most obviously and abusively in politics and advertising. Surprising, though, is the arbitrariness with which some statistics are misstated by more credible institutions and authorities. With more attention focused on boomers and our aging population, it is common to hear…
In the intrinsically superficial world of Hollywood where people make a living pretending to be who they’re not, it’s not surprising that many actors attack aging as a challenge to play “against type” – both on-screen and off. Frances McDormand, for one, rails against this conspiracy to deny aging the dignity it deserves. The Academy Award winning actress for her…
More than 7 billion people live on the planet. While our parents raise us to believe we’re each individual, and we are, technically, 99.9 percent of our genes are the same as everyone else’s. Still, we like to think we’re special. Human beings have existed for 250,000 years and during this time at least 90 billion individuals have lived and…
Who would guess the most profound dialogue on TV in recent weeks would come from Sofia Vergara’s character Gloria on “Modern Family?” With credit due to the November 12 episode’s writers, this is what she shared: “Do you know how frustrating it is to have to translate everything in my head before I say it? “To have people laughing in…
Who would ever accuse TV advertising creatives of being copycats … right? But sure enough, sandwiched between the generic blather we usually mute, are three cleverly written, directed and acted commercials with a key similarity. Each spot features a different take on the question “What?” “What” is one of those mercurial English language words with multiple definitions and even more…
If ever there was a social cause in need of a public relations campaign, it is Thanksgiving. Sandwiched between the glitzy build-up for comparatively trivial Halloween and immediately followed by two months of the grossly commercialized Christmas season, Thanksgiving gets a short-shrift. The day is unquestionably the most universally appealing of national holidays. It is a day for families and…
Kids idolize ballplayers. In my Boomer generation, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax were true national heroes. Each region of the country with a team also had local favorites – Pete Rose in Cincinnati, Al Kaline in Detroit, Hank Aaron in Milwaukee and Roberto Clemente in Pittsburgh. Young fans wore their jerseys, copied their hitting stances and pitching styles,…
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