Essays
Space child: The future that never arrived
Published on Apr 15th, 2004
0 comments Anybody seen Space Child lately? You surely remember him: He was the big-eyed icon of a transcendent tomorrow, the trans-evolutionary infant who appears at the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space...
Race matters: The Garden of Eden
Published on Apr 8th, 2004
0 comments I remember Mattie Bell. She was small and dark brown, she called me "Kate," and I felt secure being with her. When I knew Mattie Bell, my family lived in a small cottage in a tract of houses called...
Race matters: The Garden of Eden
Published on Apr 8th, 2004
0 comments I remember Mattie Bell. She was small and dark brown, she called me "Kate," and I felt secure being with her. When I knew Mattie Bell, my family lived in a small cottage in a tract of houses called...
Bye-bye, Bob: AMs won't be the same
Published on Apr 1st, 2004
0 comments I woke up this morning, as I have recently, at 5:30am, a disturbing trend but one I seem incapable of curing. This unwelcome development is eased somewhat by the knowledge that Bob Edwards, host of...
Profile surprise: How I made CPD's hit list
Published on Mar 25th, 2004
0 comments After one encounter with the Charlottesville police, the last thing I expected was another visit over the same issue [Essay, August 23: "My crime: 'You fit the description'"]. Yet here it was all...
Dear Ralph: Sorry, I'm dumping you
Published on Mar 18th, 2004
0 comments Ralph, old friend, this time you're going to have to lose the Presidency without my help, though I have been with you every time before. Some nasty things are being said about your decision to run...
Belief 101: Why Michael is innocent
Published on Mar 11th, 2004
0 comments This is why Michael Jackson thinks he is innocent, has his fans convinced he is innocent, and could possibly convince a jury he is innocent. In his mind, he is. In the now infamous Martin Bashir...
Already there? Many married men already gay
Published on Mar 4th, 2004
0 comments The Bush White House's plan to push for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages suffered a surprising setback today as a new study revealed that well over 70 percent of existing marriages...
Judicial confusion: 'Show the judge your stuff'
Published on Mar 4th, 2004
0 comments After George Bush's constitutional amendment passed, there was great confusion in the nation's courthouses as women in pants and men in skirts tried to prove that they were indeed men or women. The...
Mel's woes: No Holocaust denier-- but close
Published on Feb 26th, 2004
0 comments Mel Gibson's new film The Passion of the Christ– hailed by some as a powerful account of the last hours of Jesus' life, decried by others as an inflammatory screed with anti-Semitic overtones...
Sox lid: A hat is not just a hat
Published on Feb 19th, 2004
0 comments It's almost time for major league baseball's spring training to begin. Until this year, I have never really paid attention to spring training because I've never really been a fan. Until now. Thanks...
Fairy tales: How about a dose of reality?
Published on Feb 12th, 2004
0 comments This Spring, we will celebrate anew the ideals we first learned from fairy tales: true love, romantic harmony, and a soul mate with whom we are destined to be united for "happily ever after" by that...
Baseball truth: You build it, they'll leave
Published on Feb 5th, 2004
0 comments On the same day the Florida Marlins paraded through Miami to celebrate their second World Series championship in six years, politicians from Miami-Dade County swallowed the young baseball team's...
Ungodly politics: Dean bends to pressure
Published on Jan 29th, 2004
0 comments The other day, I was reading an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean in Newsweek when I had to stop and check that it was indeed Newsweek and not, say, Christianity Today. Yes...
Republican pork: GOP funds bushmen and blueberries
Published on Jan 22nd, 2004
0 comments The huge omnibus spending bill that's passed the House and will be voted on in the Senate when it reconvenes in Washington is loaded with special gifts. Known in Washington as "earmarks," and known...
Drugs of choice: Science tackles smoking addiction
Published on Jan 15th, 2004
0 comments Faster than an injection, more reinforcing than crack cocaine: Smoking a cigarette speeds nicotine to the brain faster than any other delivery method, giving smokers precise control over their exact...
Black holes: Illusion of health melts
Published on Jan 8th, 2004
0 comments Lying on my right side on the examining table, I gaze at the monitor next to me. As the technician guides a palm-sized plastic probe over my breast, the ultrasound records an image of the tissue...
Better living through... Christmas feast full of chemicals
Published on Dec 18th, 2003
0 comments When you get down to the stuffing this Christmas, think on, there's more to that bread sauce and sausage meat mix than meets the eye. Researchers in Germany have discovered that bread crusts are a...
No apology: Japan deserved Enola Gay's visit
Published on Dec 11th, 2003
0 comments There's a museum in Tokyo dedicated to Japan's ample history of warfare. But if you visit the plainly named Military Museum, you'll find no reference to the grotesque medical experiments the Japanese...
The watchers: They won't hear of prof's politics
Published on Dec 4th, 2003
0 comments I was happy to learn the other day that a conservative student group at the University of Texas had published a "professor watch list" of instructors who "push an ideological viewpoint on their...
In the genes: Women hard-wired to shop
Published on Nov 27th, 2003
0 comments Christmas is no longer a time of peace and goodwill to all men. It can be the season of stress, consumerism, and overloading the credit card. Everyone knows that women cope with it better than men....
My son: Adopting an orphan demands care
Published on Nov 20th, 2003
0 comments "Your son needs a therapist," I told my husband when we returned home from the doctor. "That's what she said, he needs a therapist?" "A behavioral therapist." We were not that surprised. Just last...
Cover-up: Muslim women don veils
Published on Nov 13th, 2003
0 comments BEIRUT– I remember a time not so long ago when wearing a veil was seen as unacceptable-­ at least in certain social circles. Educated women, it was thought, did not wear veils. Only five years...
Talking men: Don't marry a Silent Type
Published on Nov 6th, 2003
0 comments This is not a Hurricane Isabel story, although it starts like one. Two days after the hurricane, my entire county was still without electricity except for one small area, an intersection near the...
Taking his medicine: Rush needs more than treatment
Published on Oct 23rd, 2003
0 comments Because he's a man with firm and simple opinions about almost everything, America's most successful radio personality told his listeners years ago what society should do about unfortunate people like...
Short people: Let them opt to be taller
Published on Oct 16th, 2003
0 comments This past July, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that human growth hormone may now be prescribed to boost the height of short, but otherwise normal, children. Specifically, pediatric...
Loathsome: Bush-haters' vitriol runs big risks
Published on Oct 9th, 2003
0 comments In the acidly witty 1999 movie The Election, a mild-mannered high school civics teacher becomes consumed with his hatred of an obnoxiously perfectionist, overachieving student– to such an...
Holler news: Isabel kisses Hungrytown
Published on Oct 2nd, 2003
0 comments Thursday, September 18, 2003 awoke gray and sullen. The news had been full of it, weather channels tracking pictures of a pleasant whirlpool of white clouds swirling over warm Atlantic waters for...
Isabel's big brother: Metro honchos overstep boundaries
Published on Sep 25th, 2003
0 comments At 11am on Thursday, Hurricane Isabel was still two hours from making landfall near Ocracoke Island, at the southern tip of North Carolina's Outer Banks. Yet at that moment, Washington, D.C.'s Metro...
Edward Teller: My brush with greatness
Published on Sep 18th, 2003
0 comments While the entertainment world reels from the loss of Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, the world stage will long remember the controversial cold warrior bomb-builder Edward Teller, whose...