As soon as reminders for Mother’s Day pop up on calendars, environmentally minded writers get invitations to weigh in on our love for Mother Earth. I’m refusing them all. Referring to our planet as Mother Earth gives us a false — and dangerous — sense of security. It’s the time of year when we celebrate mothers [...]
Everyone has dreamt about being an astronaut, right? Floating above the Earth, looking down on the oceans, clouds and continents. Kicking up the dust as you bound across the magnificent desolation of the lunar landscape. Marvelling at the vast plains, canyons and mountains of Mars. Fifty years ago that dream was beyond the reach [...]
Michael Tannen, The Roches’ manager, was yelling into the phone at me. Why don’t you just listen to the radio and figure out how to write a commercial song? Then the phone went dead. We were at that point every music career gets to where the honeymoon was over. The Roches had burst onto the [...]
Somehow, it’s not surprising to learn toward the end of Paul Theroux’s thoroughly engrossing “The Last Train to Zona Verde” that this master of travel literature has never found traveling easy. His brilliant, razor-edged observations have always struck me as gritty and hard-won. Setting out solo, intent on an overland journey, relying on ramshackle buses [...]
When news broke late last week that behemoth education company Pearson had bungled the scoring of standardized tests used for admissions to gifted education programs in New York City, it united Gotham’s quarreling education community — everyone was outraged. Parents, teachers and city officials all had good reason to be, as the scoring errors would [...]
The sequester-related budget cuts that led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to furlough air-traffic controllers, resulting in flight delays at virtually all major U.S. airports, has Congress and the administration pointing fingers at each other. But perhaps a more useful issue to address is why air-traffic controllers are FAA employees. There is no good reason [...]
The way to stay sane in this city is never to expect too much. So the soothing mantras of the capital involve admonitions about the art of the possible, the perfect and the good, the zen of baby steps. Incremental, incremental, incremental. Still, it is hard to remain calm in the face of the Senate’s [...]
I’m trying to think my way through the controversy provoked by a student at Florida Atlantic University who complained when his instructor asked members of the class to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper and then step on it. Putting it that baldly makes it easy to understand why media reports of [...]
If there’s any time when we should be paying close attention to what we’re doing, it’s when we’re under pressure to perform — whether taking a test like the SAT or on a deadline at work. But too often, our minds wander even in these crucial moments — distracted by a ticking clock or [...]
With so many visitors to Kenya’s national parks, safari game drives can often turn into traffic jams. On the wide open plains of the Masai Mara National Reserve or Amboseli National Park, two of the world’s most beautiful animal habitats, it is more common to see queues of jeeps full of goggled-eyed tourists than it [...]
