For the past few years, it’s been open season on Generation Y — also known as the millennials, echo boomers or, less flatteringly, Generation Me. Once described by the trend-watchers Neil Howe and William Strauss as “the next great generation” — optimistic, idealistic and destined to do good — millennials, born between 1982 and 2002, [...]
Archive for June, 2010
The Why-Worry Generation
Posted in Living on June 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Cool
Posted in On Language, tagged May 30 2010 on June 7, 2010 | Comments Off
The Times Literary Supplement, the erudite British weekly, isn’t the first place you would expect to find an outbreak of cool. But for a recent stretch of a few months, its letters page was home to a protracted debate over exactly how cool got cool. It all started in January, when Toby Lichtig reviewed [...]
Revert
Posted in On Language, tagged June 3 2010 on June 7, 2010 | Comments Off
Lynne Geyser writes: “My son and I are in disagreement concerning the use of the word revert. The only usage I find acceptable is ‘to return to a previous state.’ He uses it (and claims that his Bahamian/English friends use it) to mean ‘to get back to someone.’ That is, instead of saying, ‘I will [...]
The Vatican Loves a Good Story
Posted in Religion on June 6, 2010 | Comments Off
It takes money, a medical miracle, and a compelling vita to make it as a saint today. It’s been an unpleasant year for Pope Benedict XVI, so much so, one feels moved to ask: Are there any papal practices he takes refuge in that are more fun than, say, celibacy? We know of at least [...]
Indonesia’s last frontier
Posted in Other on June 6, 2010 | Comments Off
Indonesia is a democracy. But many Papuans do not want to be part of it THE hotel provides free mosquito repellent and closes its pool bar before dusk to prevent guests from contracting malaria. The former Sheraton still offers the best accommodation in Indonesia’s little-visited province of Papua, catering mainly to employees of its owner, [...]
Those troublesome Jews
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on June 6, 2010 | Comments Off
The world is outraged at Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Turkey denounces its illegality, inhumanity, barbarity, etc. The usual U.N. suspects, Third World and European, join in. The Obama administration dithers. But as Leslie Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes, the blockade is not just perfectly rational, it is perfectly legal. Gaza [...]
The Origins of a Best Seller
Posted in Literature on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
‘The Good Earth’ sold millions of copies and transformed the West’s understanding of China. When she was a little girl in China at the turn of the 20th century, Pearl Buck used to play by herself in a cemetery near her missionary parents’ home. She carried with her a string bag and a sharp stick. [...]
She Spoke the Language of Flowers
Posted in Literature on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
The New York Botanical Garden had never done it before and certainly won’t be doing it again. But back in February, staff members at the Bronx aerie were busily sowing dandelion seeds, those scourges of the green-thumb set, in preparation for the current exhibition “Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers.” A reproduction of the [...]
The real thing
Posted in Conflicts and wars on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Salafists in Gaza An extreme movement that makes Hamas look mild by comparison SMUGGLERS complain that Egypt hampers three things imported through the blockade-busting tunnels that supply Gaza: weapons, dishwashers (their timers can double as detonators), and books. Of the three, the last may be the most regulated. One smuggler complained that the Egyptian authorities [...]
A disaster with many fathers
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Here’s my question: Why were we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in [...]
Here’s a case that happened earlier
Posted in Weird cases on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
Re-enacting alleged crimes in front of a judge isn’t always a good idea. Using a pair of underpants, however, and four bags of sugar, a defence lawyer in Mumbai recently managed to save his client from the death penalty. Dhirendra Kamdar stood accused of attempting to traffic heroin. He had a previous conviction for drug [...]
One-day wonder
Posted in The Word, tagged May 30 2010 on June 1, 2010 | Comments Off
How fast can a word become legit? How fast can a word enter the language? A couple of weeks ago, an apparently totally made-up new word seemed to set the land-speed record for the jump from “early use” to “inclusion in a dictionary.” On May 12, the word malamanteau showed up in the Web comic [...]
