Essays
Gratitude: How a devastating loss made sense of everything
Published on Nov 25th, 2010
8 comments   I dreaded the day that my mother wouldn't know me. I had accepted that she had Alzheimer's disease and it was inevitable. It wasn't that bad when it came. Later, I even got used to...
Ring: The death of the phone call
Published on Nov 18th, 2010
3 comments   My phone bills are shrinking. Not, unfortunately, in cost. I mean they're getting shorter. I recently found an old bill from a decade ago; it was fully 15 pages long, because back then I was...
ESSAY- Harming Eden: Become an environmentalist, for the love of God
Published on Nov 11th, 2010
1 comments Conservative religious talk-show hosts and many of their followers often assert that environmentalists worship the creation instead of the creator. The implication is that people concerned about...
Penn's teller: A chance Hollywood encounter in the Omni
Published on Nov 4th, 2010
0 comments   Three years ago, Penn–- who died September 28 at the age of 88-and-a-day–- received a lifetime achievement award at a Berlin film festival.Reuters/Fabrizio Bensch As the 23rd...
ESSAY- Houses and handbags: What Chicago can teach Charlottesville
Published on Oct 28th, 2010
4 comments PHOTO BY JANIS JAQUITH Oh, I am a sucker for novelty! Eye-catching design is tough to resist. And there I was, in a shop on Chicago's Magnificent Mile a few weeks ago, surrounded by gorgeous Italian...
ESSAY- Annals of (not) dredging: How to squander a resource
Published on Oct 14th, 2010
7 comments Avant le delugeApres le delugePHOTOS BY KAREN PAPE At first glance, the left photo, taken September 26, appears to be a farm field baking in Central Virginia's recent desert summer. The right image...
ESSAY- Keep pedaling: How exercise helps your weight, life
Published on Oct 7th, 2010
0 comments As a nation, Americans getting fatter and fatter. Yet we seem ever more confused about how to lose weight. We're particularly fuzzy on the question of how big a role exercise plays, or whether we...
ESSAY- Invasive pest? Why imported bugs and plants can be good
Published on Sep 30th, 2010
0 comments Here's a fact that I suspect most people don't know: Wherever we humans have gone in the past two centuries, we have increased local and regional biodiversity. Biodiversity, in this case, is...
ESSAY- Recycling confessions: Why my body isn't graveyard-bound
Published on Sep 23rd, 2010
2 comments PHOTO BY JANIS JAQUITH I hate recycling. So, let's get it over with: stone me or burn me at the stake or do whatever you do to a heretic nowadays. But I can't be bothered with analyzing,...
ESSAY- Lady Gaga: And the Pornification of America
Published on Sep 16th, 2010
0 comments With a record-breaking 17 million fans on Facebook, a chart-topping 5 million followers and the most popular hashtext on twitter (#becauseofgaga), the most watched YouTube video, and more than $34...
ESSAY- Enough yogurt: Why I'm not falling for Activia and others
Published on Sep 9th, 2010
0 comments File Photo The pressure to eat yogurt in America is out of control. In recent years makers of the tasty snack, once the province of menopausal women and grade-school sack lunches, have been...
ESSAY- Suffragist city: Beginnings and endings on Women's Equality Day
Published on Sep 2nd, 2010
4 comments Last Thursday, August 26 was the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the one that granted women the right to vote. I've been thinking about this one for a while. In fact,...
ESSAY- Being whole: A life cut short, and lives restored
Published on Aug 26th, 2010
2 comments   Jeremy Pinkerton FAMILY PHOTO "Brain death was achieved at 11:30," his father said.   It was just two days since we'd heard about Jeremy's accident. The first email came from...
ESSAY- Religion trumps: As libertarians wage war on free speech
Published on Aug 19th, 2010
6 comments Two months ago, long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas got fired by her employer, the Hearst newspaper conglomerate, in response to her off-the-cuff slam at Israel. I criticized the...
ESSAY- Playing God: Why it's still a fools' game
Published on Aug 12th, 2010
1 comments In his June 24 Hook essay "Playing God? Synthetic biology offers promise, not peril," Ronald Bailey wonders how anyone could be against biological tinkering. But as it turns out, quite a few people...
ESSAY- U.S. policy: We don't win wars; we just disrupt
Published on Jul 29th, 2010
0 comments Hamid KarzaiIMAGE BY FLICKR/ISAMEDIA Like all Afghans, Hamid Karzai knows history. Which is why he's talking to the neo-Taliban. The postmodern heirs to the Islamist government Bush deposed in 2001...
ESSAY- U.S. policy: We don't win wars; we just disrupt
Published on Jul 22nd, 2010
0 comments IMAGE BY FLICKR/ISAMEDIA Like all Afghans, Hamid Karzai knows history. Which is why he's talking to the neo-Taliban. The postmodern heirs to the Islamist government Bush deposed in 2001, the...
ESSAY- Cap this: What's lost in the BP clean-up
Published on Jul 22nd, 2010
0 comments Finally but tentatively Uncle Sam and BP are declaring the largest oil spill in off-shore history capped. BP's latest approach has halted the flow of a guesstimated 184 million gallons of crude...
ESSAY- Bottle scam: Why you're wasting money on water
Published on Jul 15th, 2010
1 comments We think of ourselves as shrewd and thrifty shoppers. And yet, when it comes to bottled water, North Americans are annually conned to the tune of eight billion gallons and 15 billion dollars, paying...
ESSAY- Sky man: Would he like to come and meet us?
Published on Jul 8th, 2010
5 comments PHOTO BY JANIS JAQUITH When you're pedaling away on your bike, you don't expect to look up in the sky and see the head of a gigantic man. But that's what happened to me. Looming over the mountaintop...
ESSAY- Texas Taliban: Why they still fear Jefferson
Published on Jul 1st, 2010
117 comments The impending celebration of Independence Day comes about four months after the powerful Texas Board of Education voted to undermine one of our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms; namely, that of...
ESSAY- Free speech: Helen Thomas learns it's just a myth
Published on Jun 17th, 2010
22 comments This is why a lot of people think Jews control the media. Not me. I've worked in the media most of my life. So I know that the media is controlled by morons. Still, what happened to Helen Thomas...
ESSAY- Playing God? Synthetic biology offers promise, not peril
Published on Jun 17th, 2010
3 comments Better medicines, carbon neutral fuels, cheaper food, and a cleaner environment– who could be against that? Well, quite a few people, as it turns out. A research team led by private human...
ESSAY- Runaway spending: The wrong kind of Toyotathon
Published on Jun 10th, 2010
0 comments Tales of runaway cars have a long history. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted its first study of sudden acceleration in 1978. By 1987, it was investigating sudden...
ESSAY- Crime and no punishment: Why it's time to nationalize BP
Published on Jun 3rd, 2010
11 comments The Supreme Court says that corporations have the same rights as individuals. When they misbehave, shouldn't they face consequences as serious as those imposed upon an individual? It goes without...
ESSAY- Granny Rx: A little-known way to help the elderly
Published on May 27th, 2010
0 comments   How hard could this be? I keep hearing that we have the best health care on planet Earth, so how hard could it be to find a doctor who specializes in the care of old people?   Seriously...
ESSAY- BP: It stands for Bad Petroleum
Published on May 20th, 2010
3 comments The White House recently warned BP that it expects the oil giant to pay all damages associated with the disastrous oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, even if the costs exceed the $75 million...
ESSAY- Cap this: Why I feel oily, not vindicated
Published on May 13th, 2010
0 comments My saddest moment came a few weeks ago when I was proven absolutely correct. As a former roughneck and present transportation demand management consultant, I'd been predicting for three years, since...
ESSAY- Abusing students: How universities treat them like children
Published on May 6th, 2010
0 comments Four year ago, Duke University became the center of a national controversy about sexual assault, wrongful accusations, and campus politics when four lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping...
ESSAY- Brave bounders: How I met the living dead in Boston
Published on Apr 29th, 2010
4 comments Charlottesville's Boston Bounders, a few hours post-marathon, on April 19th, in BostonPHOTO BY JANIS JAQUITH They staggered through the hotel lobby– men and women who were curiously fit, yet...