Armchair Sociology
neurontic | August 10, 2007My gut response after reading this question was: Well, duh--obviously, summer is more conducive to happiness. I mean, you can make a good case for the virtues of spring and fall, but they're really less seasons than they are opening acts. And apart from Christmas and skiing, winter doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it. Nope. If you're ranking seasons, summertime is the clear winner. Summer=hot sun, slow, quiet afternoons, and water-logged family vacations. What more does a human being need to be happy, apart from an air-conditioner and an ample supply of snacks?
Proving my theory seemed…
neurontic | July 8, 2007
Having been raised in California - birthplace of est, vegan bacon, and aerobics - I grew up thinking of life less as an "adventure" than as a relentless self-improvement campaign. Oh, don't get me wrong, I got more than my fair share of personal affirmation at home, but no matter how special my parents insisted I was, the prevailing message of the culture around me was that with a little work I could be "specialer"--or at the very least skinnier, healthier, and more well-adjusted.
I figured out relatively early on that this was a losing battle, but it has still left me with irrational…
neurontic | May 12, 2007A few months ago, I wrote about my "issues" with the Dawkins/Dennett anti-religion campaign, which concluded:
Dawkins and Dennett simply cannot understand the impulse to cling to an antiquated belief system not grounded in fact. (They seem incapable of recognizing that religion, despite its myriad flaws, provides a type of moral succor in times of strife that science can't.) To convince the masses of the errors of their ways, they're using the only weapon at their disposal: logic. The irony, of course, is that faith is not grounded in logic. Reason is toothless in the face of belief.
This…
neurontic | March 24, 2007Want to know what the life of a recently graduated journalism MA with staggeringly high student loans looks like? Not so much? Well, I don't blame you. It's not exactly the stuff memoirs are made of, but it is keeping me extremely busy. There's been some freelance reporting for The New York Times and Fortune Small Business Magazine, a regular gig fact-checking at The New York Observer, a couple of pieces for Psychology Today, along with my normal gig writing about community events for the local newspapers.
Hustling is a prerequisite for success in this field, and as long as I get to write…
neurontic | February 12, 2007My last semester at NYU, I had the opportunity to take a class with Steven Johnson. Just to set the record straight for those of you who've only encountered his name on Gawker, Johnson was a fabulous teacher and looks nothing at all like Steve Buscemi. (Having always had kind of a thing for Buscemi, I can't say I'm entirely happy about that.) In any case, during the course of the class, we were visited by a couple of blogging luminaries, shipped in to discuss "the dissolution of print journalism and the future of new media." I won't bore you with the specifics. Suffice it to say, print…