Friday, October 2, 2015

War of the Whales: An environmental adventure story

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We all know the old bromide that you can’t fight City Hall. Well imagine how tough it must be to take on the US Navy.  Especially if the ca...
Thursday, September 24, 2015

This woman changed and defined Hollywood in the 70's

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Hollywood is a like sports or politics. Each generation gives us stars and personalities that both reflect the culture and tenor of the tim...
Monday, September 21, 2015

War Correspondent to the World's Women

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The world today is a dangerous, unstable and violent place. And while Stephen Pinker tells us that today is less violent than at any other ...
Wednesday, September 16, 2015

The Moral Panic of the 1980's

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We see today in the debate regarding immigration, a little bit about the the ways that falsehood and mass hysteria, mixed with doses of fear...
Monday, September 14, 2015

The Making of Asian America

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For reasons that are both complicated and simplistic, immigration has become the issues of our time. Fifty years ago the passage of the Imm...
Monday, September 7, 2015

Labor Day for Domestic Workers

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Imagine one movement the combines every contemporary progressive social issue; race, immigration, Civil Rights, the labor movement, gender d...
Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Is College Football worth the cost?

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In spite of a rough stock market and a bumpy economy there is one business, not a tech company, that has grown revenues from $229 million in...
Tuesday, September 1, 2015

The Gift of Failure

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I’ve often told the story of a newly minted teacher considering her first job. She had several offers, but in the end there were two that w...
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...