If for no other reason than it affects everyone, ageism is the most pervasive of all forms of discrimination. Though some of us have more experience than others, the fact is everyone is aging. The behaviors contributing to ageism, while…
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“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,…
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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,…
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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…
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“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…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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