“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” - Anne Frank
“People are inherently evil. Religion is the only civilizing force; without it, we’d all be reduced to a savage state, a state we’re really on the brink of all the time.” - My brother (paraphrased)
My brother recently revealed to [...]
Archive for the ‘Mind & Brain’ category
You Be Bad
On Sickness and in Health
I’m writing this in a waiting room at Georgetown University hospital, where a friend is having an MRI. She’s been healthy her whole life, but in the past couple of months has endured a whole catalogue of physical and emotional ills — stomach pain, severe indigestion, back pain, anxiety, insomnia. This morning, she said to [...]
Four from 4 at 40
In 1967, BBC Radio ended the Home Service and the Light Programme to launch four radio stations to meet the needs of contemporary Britons. Radio 1 brought pop for the kids, Radio 2 easy listening for the parents, Radio 3 for the classical fans, and Radio 4 to be a British speech radio station [...]
What we can conceal
I don’t own a pet, but my roommate has a cat who pesters me when I’m home and a coworker has a chocolate Lab who pesters me when I’m at work. It’s now to the point where any smallish, annoying thing, including a child, gets marked in my mind with the dog’s name. We’ll call [...]
Objectification of desire: part one
We love stuff. In spite of our declared aspirations to be clutter-free, eco-friendly, and economical, we surround ourselves with objects of function, entertainment, and occasional beauty. I have gone through many phases of object-worship, verging on being a pack rat and a collectoholic.
My favorite repository of stuff is the Victoria and Albert Museum [...]
Three, four, knock at the door
I’m one of those liberals who likes to reject criminal stereotypes. Although I present as a prissy white middle class woman who might be obsessed by the murder of Laci Peterson while ignoring the thousands of women of color who are victims of crime, I’m not. I hate that Nancy Grace-style racism and [...]
Wired
Lately, I’ve got a new bedtime ritual. Bath, brush, floss, all the same. But as I hit the lights and slide under the covers, I roll over and face something new in my bed: a portable DVD player. It’s a loaner from a pal, but I’m having trouble giving it back. Mostly because suddenly every [...]
I checked yes
I took my first personality test in college. I was a sophomore and was in the process of declaring a Secondary Education major. As part of the placement application, students were asked to take a well-known standardized assessment. This was presumably to eliminate those unsuited to work with children. I remember pages and pages of convoluted [...]
Jean Baudrillard: He’s “real” dead
As someone who, for the longest time, doubted the possibility of human reality, let alone authenticity, Jean Baudrillard was a voice to put order to my fragmented ideas. Of course, this is hugely ironic since Baudrillard himself would argue that my need to turn to someone else to congeal my thoughts is proof of [...]
Tales from the office
Sharon
Although she’s in her late seventies and has memory problems, Sharon still recognizes that she enjoys the company of younger men. She has enough money to hire a full-time aide to assist her in all endeavors. And she always chooses handsome and educated men in their early thirties. I’ve met three of [...]
