Latest Posts
Poli Psy: Chronic Insanity
Published June 26, 2009
Our health-care “system” promotes and exploits the peculiar American illusion that the body is invulnerable and the spirit autonomous; that human need is a temporary aberration.
Read more at Seven Days.
Continue reading Poli Psy: Chronic Insanity »
Babying Bristol
Published May 28, 2009
Bristol, Levi, Sarah, Todd, Tripp, Trig — and what parents really want.
Continue reading Babying Bristol »
Decent Exposure?
Published May 1, 2009
First the Keystone Komstocks started protecting teens from themselves by arresting them on child porn charges for “sexting.”
Now a Massachusetts legislator would criminalize the photographing of people over 60 and those with disabilities. Such adults would be statutorily unable to consent.
Sex crimes law is like a black hole: Once reason falls in, it can never re-emerge.
Continue reading Decent Exposure? »
How to Thrive in the Recession
Published April 3, 2009
Re-use your tampons. Take up counterfeiting. Send your kids out as chimney-sweeps or child soldiers.
You can thrive when the economy doesn’t!
Continue reading How to Thrive in the Recession »
Are lots of teens really ’sexting’?
Published March 26, 2009
Remember “wilding” — the homicidal hellraising that poor kids of color were alleged to be doing in Central Park? It turned out to be an invention of some journalist or cop — a name for racist anxieties about invasions by the Other into a perceived redoubt of “civilized” (read: white) New York City.
“Sexting” may be [...]
Continue reading Are lots of teens really ’sexting’? »
19,000?
Published March 20, 2009
That’s the number of minors I said — in last Saturday’s talk — were on sex offender registries nationally. But the statistic kept bothering me. To say the least, it seemed high, even if it included (as the source indicated) those people who were no longer minors but were under the age of consent when [...]
Not Buying It Redux: Brian Lehrer Live
Published March 20, 2009
I had an interesting conversation with WNYC radio’s Brian Lehrer the other night on his TV show. Among other things, we chatted about my recent Salon.com piece, The Case Against Thrift, and about how life has changed since Paul’s and my blithe self-imposed parsimony of 2004.
I’m still thinking about that piece, and why I’m [...]
Continue reading Not Buying It Redux: Brian Lehrer Live »