Narcissism, Disintegration, Suicidality & the Fall of the West: Part IV: “… our culture routinely overstimulates our children, which is a factor in such disparate problems as hyperactivity, precocious sexual behavior, and the sexualization of relationships … “

Read the rest of this entry »

Sheria at The Examined Life posted some statistics from the Daily Kos depression poll of the century. Just as well, I need crap like this … extrapolated so as to keep it at some remove. Sanity is precious, you know,  and one wants to go on believing the best of ones’ neighbors, in both the immediate and existential sense. I have always thought that being hateful inside must be the most boring of lives. Read the rest of this entry »

Betty Friedan died on February 4, in 2006, on her 85th birthday. Germaine Greer (who knew Germaine Greer was funny) wrote a wonderful memorial at the time, in the Guardian UK

In 1972, Betty and I, and Helvi Sipila of the United Nations, were together in Iran as guests of the Women’s Organisation of Iran, and once again I had difficulty in dissociating myself from Betty, who would usually take over my allotted speaking time as well as her own and inveigh against younger feminists who burned bras and talked dirty.

Read the rest of this entry »

“She was also planning to conduct two classes from space, including a tour of the spacecraft, called ‘The Ultimate Field Trip’”

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m surprised no one has mentioned, in all this flap about the iPad—and I have my own theories about that name, I think it was Steve’s, pardon me, Teh Steve’s idea, and no one wanted to disabuse him. I mean, we know this thing has been His baby, for a long time. If a problem with the name didn’t occur to him—would you want to be the one to tell him?

Read the rest of this entry »

It was J.D. Salinger who taught me how to write. Not the man, but a person who seemed perfectly real to me—Salinger’s startling gift to literature, these people, their human vitality—Seymour, the oldest of the Glass children. Buddy, his brother, reads aloud, as it were, the letter that comprises Seymour, Read the rest of this entry »