Monday, August 31, 2015

The Joy of Being Scared - Remembering Wes Craven

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Through the efforts of both critics and audiences, we’ve come to understand that “genre films,” are just as significant as mainstream films....

Oliver Sacks R.I.P

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How do we navigate the world in spite of change?  It's one of the central tenants of modern society. Over and over again,  Oliver Sacks ...
Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The not so perfect storm: Katrina at 10 years

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The phrase “The Perfect Storm” has come to mean a lot of things. Most notably the unique and singular coming together of disparate forces t...
Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The LAPD and the Battle to Redeem American Policing

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When we think about the iconography and the history of contemporary policing and urban criminal justice what comes to mind? Sixty years ago...
Friday, August 21, 2015

Plenty Ladylike

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Even today, fifteen months before Election Day, we are in full political campaign season. And while we hear a lot of loose talk about issue...
Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Beat L.A.

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One of the ongoing conundrums in sports is whether it’s about the team or the individual? Back in the early days of the NFL, Pete Rozelle ...

Why Addiction is Not a Disease - Recovering from Recovery

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We have developed what amounts to an addiction/industrial complex. Each year billions are spent, in both public and private dollars, to tre...
Friday, August 7, 2015

Life after Nuclear War

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As we debate the ins and out of nuclear proliferation, on editorial pages and in the drawing rooms of Georgetown; in the halls of Congress a...
Tuesday, August 4, 2015

From a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League

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As we debate immigration, we still always look favorably on the “Dreamers.” The young undocumented students thriving here in America. It’...
Thursday, July 30, 2015

Eighty Years Ago, Paperback Books Were Considered "Creative Destruction"

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Today when we think about the publishing industry, we usually think about the ways that it is changing to accommodate the dig...

Is Water the Sine Qua Non of "red" and "blue" America?

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I’m often the first to criticize the way in which we are too quick to put things in political terms. Too often the rush to label “red” or “...
Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Are you ever surprised that you are being lied to?

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To about the same degree that Captain Renault was “shocked, just shocked” to find gambling going on Casablanca, that’s how shocked many of u...
Thursday, July 16, 2015

Big Science and The Launch of the Military Industrial Complex

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We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory...
Friday, July 10, 2015

Primates of Park Avenue

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We have always studied other cultures so that perhaps we could better understand our own. The realm of cultural anthropology has provided us...
Monday, July 6, 2015

A kid with a dream - Jerry Weintraub R.I.P.

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Jerry Weintraub  spent more than five decades in show business. As a promoter, manager, movie and Broadway producer, his success was unpar...
Sunday, July 5, 2015

How to Keep Listening When the World Wants a Fight

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Listen to any of the Republican candidates and it’s clear that the culture war issues that have driven so much political debates over the pa...
Friday, June 26, 2015

Nixon's the One

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Most of us know the legendary story of the group of blind men who touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different pa...
Monday, June 22, 2015

Charles and Ray Eames and the technology of timelessness

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Long before Steve Jobs and Jony Ives bridged the divide between design and technology, before Target began selling Michael Graves tea kettl...
Thursday, June 18, 2015

Before Jobs, Musk, Hewlett & Packard, or Ford...there were The Wright Brothers

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We live today in what many consider the age of technology. Everyday there are new apps, new ways in which incumbency is disrupted. But ver...
Tuesday, June 16, 2015

A Russian Spy, A Double Agent, The FBI and Hooters Parking Lot

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Today boys want to grow up to be professional athletes, or tech billionaires. But there was time when being a secret agent seemed like just...