The movie "Wall Street" was supposed to be showing how bad those people were, but instead people admired them. That's always a danger. Is this movie going to shame the people who are already beyond shame (and have judgement very much impaired by drugs and alcohol)? Or are they laughing at our outrage and…

People in other cultures haven't advanced as far into the sociopathic territory of "money before all else" as we have. Apparently he still has a feeling of responsibility for what his creation does when let loose in the world. Good for him.

It's not like he's winning just on strategy. In order to execute any strategy you have to know enough and be fast enough to take control. He's doing that. I'm surprised this isn't done more often. Sheep, we are.

Near Princeton, NJ, there used to be a pick-your-own orchard that was super fun to visit because they had a bunch of animals, including a lot of cats. These cats were pretty friendly. They also had a cut-your-own flower garden (10 cents a stem), and freshly made apple cider doughnuts and apple cider. There should…

My cousin had her wedding reception at Paris on Ponce. It was the best reception ever.

I would like to live in a world where people were tolerant in rare situations where a baby has to be brought somewhere and it cries. Apparently Jezebel commenters have no such scruples. Everyone appears to feel justified in being pissed about a baby crying at their expensive restaurant. This makes me sad.

The success of Minecraft ought to be incentive to try something different. I taught camps in Scratch and Python programming and I had them write simple games as soon as possible. There were about 3 girls out of about 30 campers in each of my 4 weeks. The boys almost all went instantly to shooting games. One girl…

My daughter is 16 and is into video games and has the artistic, creative and technical aptitude to think about a career in video game design. Her father and I both have PhDs in Computer Science. But....we watched Indie Games and then she heard me ranting about how Phil Fish was vilified and she says she won't even…

Grey here.. I was teaching a camp for the first time this summer and I was excited to do fun teaching instead of teaching teaching. I was feeling fat and stressing about my looks the first day (who cares, I'm middle aged and these kids are middle school, but still....). At some point I had a rebellious breakthrough…

Zooey's hair covering some of the busy-ness in the top helps. I think if you removed the neck applique and the vertical and horizontal stripey things on the bodice and just had the upper part of the bodice be the netty stuff (and take the embellishment off the sleeves) then it would have been gorgeous. I still like…

My daughter is a sophomore in college. At her father's house, they turned her bedroom into a guestroom as soon as she moved out. She felt sad about that. Maybe there's a middle ground. Although I love your picture with all the bookshelves!

I don't think this is true. Alcoholics drink varying amounts. People have different susceptibility to alcoholism. I don't want people to think "I drink less than 14 beers so I am safe." It's not that simple since every body is different. I don't think you would get laughed out of AA. Besides, imagine a person…

Lots of alcoholism in my family. Some people can function at work even while drinking alcoholically and some can't. It's almost worse for an alcoholic if they can function well with it. Because usually they are not happy in the first place and it's a great strain to keep the drinking under control. Not saying…

It's the Wall Street effect. The bad guy protagonist said "greed is good" and we were supposed to hate him, but "we" didn't. If movies really do have a big effect on people's attitudes, then the movie Wall Street helped legitimize the disastrous 80s that laid the groundwork for the income inequality and…

Japan has stopped using these vaccines (Wikipedia on Gardasil). There are legitimate concerns about whether the benefits outweigh the risks. It's hard to get good information about benefits/risks about any vaccine or drug because the pharmaceutical industry has shown itself over and over to be untrustworthy. They…

Amen. If the school systems pays for the devices, then that's $200 or more a year (because they only lease them) plus maintenance costs for every student in the school system. It's highway robbery of public school dollars. In a North Carolina school district which they're touting in my area as a success story, they…

The comments on the news article about them are overwhelmingly positive. So glad to see that. Very impressed with how gracious they were.

The offer to buy Julia dope if she gets to Step 4 and it doesn't work for her is not a sick kind of reward, it's a form of a saying they use in 12 step groups to get people to try it. They say, "we'll refund your misery if it doesn't work". They also say "Go out and try some controlled drinking." in AA. The…

We don't hear much about environmental injustice either. Poor people and also black people are more likely to live near a waste site or a factory that produces toxic waste or smoke. Black women may have a higher rate of cancer because of this, but this is not the kind of research that our corporate-dominated…

It's not so good for women, though. I had a friend who was Mormon and married to a Mormon. She had been taught that she would only get into heaven if her husband, called her secret name that only he knew *and* if he was a good Mormon. So to keep his "good Mormon" status, she had to keep him from doing things that…