Do you know who Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert are?
Can you tell me who the current secretary of state is? Or who the Defense Secretary is?
I bet not.
But I would place money on the fact that you could name me at least two celebrities who are pregnant, the latest color of Britney Spears’ wig or the name of the diet that Jessica Simpson is currently on.
We are pretty pathetic my friends. According to an article in the New York Times, today’s youth is not news savvy. Read More »
We are all aware that there are a lot of people criticizing college students today. Whether we are called lazy and or entitled, it’s always something, it seems. Well, fortunately, the NY Times is giving college students all over the country the chance to respond.
The New York Times Magazine College Essay Contest website says that, “In the turbulent late ’60s and early ’70s, college campuses played a major role in the culture and politics of the era. Today, according to author and historian Rick Perlstein, colleges have lost their central place in the broader society and in the lives of undergraduates.” Read More »
I like to think myself a low – maintenance kind of gal (code: I’m too lazy and messy to pull off mascara). I take a long time to get ready, sure, I just don’t put much effort into the process. Typically, getting ready for a “date” involves pulling on an unstained tank top and flossing.
But I only floss if I really like the guy.
That’s hardly the case for performance artist Lián Amaris Sifuentes. For three days last week, Sifuentes and her crew set up a faux bedroom in NYC’s Union Square, where she has been slowly preparing for a date in her piece called “Fashionably Late for the Relationship.”
Last Saturday, she took a nap and spent seven hours drinking a glass of wine. Last Sunday, she tried on dresses for 15 hours.
Sifuentes told the New York Times that she is trying to draw attention to the “private feminine ritual.”
I’m not impressed. Yeah, we all like to gussy ourselves up for guys. Even I own a tube or two of chapstick. But honestly, taking 72 hours to prepare for a date isn’t all that odd.
How many times have you started dreaming up outfits a week ahead of time? It’s not laborious, it’s fun. The weird part of Sifuentes’s act is that she’s going on an actual date (while there’s no word if she’s actually going on one after her charade ceases). Read More »
“Mom!” Paris Hilton is reported to have shouted when the judge ordered her back to school, “it’s just not fair!”
Celebrity moms are everywhere these days, from Kathy Hilton giving TMZ an hour by hour update of her daughter’s recent jail time, to Dina Lohan—aka the “Orange Oprah”, aka A Horrible Role Model—exclaiming to Entertainment Tonight that she goes out and parties with her daughter.
It’s not just famous moms and daughters who are spending more time together. A recent article in the New York Times reports “social, demographic and technological changes have made it more common for adult daughters to keep their mothers’ apron strings tied tighter — and for longer,” say researchers who study the transition into young adulthood.
Cell phones, the internet, even AIM are becoming common ways for daughters to talk to their mothers, allowing a connection much more prevalent than ever before.
“There is a higher level of dependence,” Vivian Gadsden, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, explains in the article. “In that way [young adults] are very much a product of this period in our history.” Read More »
Sending kids away to college should not be a scary thing for parents, right? I mean, you figure they will be heading to a community where they are protected and taken care of. This is not the case for one family whose daughter mysteriously passed away while at Eastern Michigan University.
Not only did the Dickinson family have to deal with the loss of their daughter, Laura, but now, reports are surfacing of foul play surrounding her death that the college was aware of and tried to hide. Big No-No.
The New York Times reports that “for two months after Laura Dickinson was found dead in her dormitory room, Eastern Michigan University officials assured her parents and the public that there was no sign of foul play. It was not until a fellow classmate was arrested in February that the truth came out: Ms. Dickinson had been raped and murdered.” Read More »
By the time we hit our twenties, most girls have thought about getting a boob job. Even if we would never really consider going under the knife, we’ve at least discussed it with friends, joked about it, or secretly researched how much it would cost to turn ourselves in Pam Anderson. Society is big on boobs.
Unless you’re a guy.
Sure, men supposedly think about tits all day long, but actually having them isn’t something most men relish. Unlike their female counterparts, man boobs aren’t appealing, and in today’s beauty-obsessed world, our fixation on breasts might actually be working against the very species that invented it. Read More »
As if you needed any more convincing that the War in Iraq isn’t going as well as they’ve been trying to tell us, a new article in the New York Times highlights the growing stress on soldiers as they endure longer and more repeated tours.
It’s not a new discovery that combat induces anxiety, trauma, and even depression in soldiers, but the new decision by the Bush Administration to lengthen many tours from the traditional one year to 15 months causes concern among many, especially when it comes to the misplaced combat anger directed at civilians.
According to the article, the Pentagon’s new survey suggests that “extended tours and multiple deployments, among other policy decisions, could escalate anger and increase the likelihood that soldiers or marines lash out at civilians, or defy military ethics.” Another sad fact, as recorded by the Pentagon, shows “suicide rates for soldiers in Iraq from 2003 to 2006 were 16.1 per 100,000, compared with the average Army rate of 11.1.” Read More »
Did The Matrix spur the Columbine shooters? Was the Paducah, Kentucky high school shooter inspired by The Basketball Diaries? Did Virginia Tech’s shooter Cho Seung-Hui kill because of what he saw in OldBoy (a violent Korean film made in 2003)?
In a recent Time.com article, author Richard Corliss wonders if it’s more than a strange coincidence that one of the pictures Cho took of himself where he “looks fierce and holds a raised hammer” is very similar to a shot in Korean director Park Chan-Wook’s film.
Just because he raises the question doesn’t mean Corliss actually believes there is any connection. In fact, he challenges anyone who thinks these movies are somehow responsible for the aforementioned shooting sprees to “explain why [everyone else] who saw Oldboy, and The Matrix, and Saw, didn’t do the same.” Read More »
As I was browsing the internet on a snowy Sunday, I came across something that really made me wonder if AIM usage has reached a new level. Each Sunday newspapers such as The New York Times and The New York Post publish a section on weddings and highlight different couples. And I’ll admit it, I’m a devout reader of the NY Times wedding section. Not because I plan on getting married ANYtime soon, but because it’s more of a fantasy aspect in college to read about couples that found each other while both working on PhD’s at Ivy League schools or met while searching for a cure to cancer, yada yada yada. I mean, a girl can dream right?
Carrie Bradshaw once said the wedding announcements in the Times are “the straight woman’s sports pages,” and I would have to agree.
But, the Post has also started a wedding section that features more, ahem, “normal people.” The couple highlighted this week met on the internet (okay, thats fine and becoming more acceptable recently). So, for some reason, the husband thought it would be okay to propose over the internet! On AIM! Read More »
The New York Times reported in a recent article that the candidates for the 2008 election will be using social networking tools such as myspace as a campaign tool. So far, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joseph Biden, and Dennis Kucinich have set up myspace pages, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney will launch their official pages in the coming weeks.
“Tom Anderson, 31, a MySpace founder, said, “MySpace has a method of reaching people who are historically not interested in voting” and may not read newspapers or watch news on television. He added: “A MySpace profile could excite their interest in ways they are used to. In the same way they learn about their friends, they could learn about a candidate.””
I’m not sure how I feel about this tactic, it seems sort of silly to me that candidates are setting up accounts on sites where typically it would be creepy for someone their age to be on. But, I can see the argument that at least it gets young people interested in the issues, even if they are just glancing at the pages briefly.
Here’s what I could come up with in terms of myspace pages that are up so far for each
candidate:
I personally think Kucinich’s is the most intense/cheesiest looking page…Check them out and see what you think!
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