The Concrete Donkey

The new marriage

2012-02-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how some of these desires have changed. For instance, chastity certainly has dropped as a desired characteristic. Is that the American man beginning to assume or even accept the fact that spouses will stray? Read the article here.

Heavy

2011-12-21T20:34:00.000-08:00

Another reason not to eat meat

2011-10-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

This article is gross and kind of scary. "Houseflies...are vectors of what we leave behind, carrying it back to us, as though to say, “Over here! You forgot something…” They are the messenger nobody asked for, bearing the messages nobody wants, whether about the overuse of antibiotics or some other of our failings." Read the entire article here.

Can American education replicate Finland's success?

2011-08-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article about why Finland's school system is the envy of the world when I came across a telling paragraph. First, a little background. Apparently (I haven't seen the movie yet), Waiting for Superman, the documentary about the "failure" of the American education system, holds Finland up as the model for effective education. The statistics tell the story. According to the article,

So let me get this straight...

2011-08-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure this out. Correct me if I'm wrong. The reason Congress had so much trouble getting an agreement on the debt ceiling was that Republicans were opposed to raising taxes. Their mantra was, and is, "Don't Raise Taxes." Now, they are proposing raising taxes on 47% of all Americans. They can't have it both ways. They are being complete hypocrites. Or am I missing something?

The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight

2011-08-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

"In a political debate you feel like the other side just doesn’t get your point of view, and if they could only see things with your clarity, they would understand and fall naturally in line with what you believe. They must not understand, because if they did they wouldn’t think the things they think. By contrast, you believe you totally get their point of view and you reject it. You see it

Movies in School

2011-08-17T23:51:00.000-07:00

Two liberal magazines (Mother Jones and The New Yorker) have reported with obvious disapproval that the charter school Michelle Bachmann founded would not allow students to watch Aladdin because it involved magic and paganism. I think Bachmann is a lunatic, but I agree with her school's decision. That's right, she and I align on this one. However, though I agree with the school's decision, I

The Debt Crisis

2011-08-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm a liberal in almost every way, but I don't really follow politics. In my opinion, it's just a bunch of posturing from people who are more concerned with making money to get reelected than they are with passing good laws. So I haven't followed the debt ceiling "crisis." Yes, it's important, but I just get pissed every time I read about it. Now, as the post-mortems get written about the "

Ouch

2011-07-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

From Anthony Lane's review of "Bad Teacher" in The New Yorker. What a devastatingly great opening. Waiting for “Bad Teacher” to begin, I caught a trailer for the upcoming “Horrible Bosses.” What is it with these titles? Studios may think that they can palm us off with flat, sour recitations of what their products contain, but, back in 1975, no one would have paid to see a Spielberg film

Can't. Quit. Listening.

2011-05-14T16:09:00.000-07:00

The Globes!!

2011-04-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

I saw The Globes last night at the A Club. Holy crap they're good! Their new record comes out at the end of the month, but until then, I HIGHLY suggest you download this EP. Support a Spokane band before they hit the big time--and they WILL hit the big time. Hell, they just played SXSW in Austin, and they're playing Sasquatch in May.

Winner Take All

2011-03-17T15:36:00.000-07:00

In a review of the book Winner-Take-All Politics, Ezra Klein notes that the gap between rich and poor has grown not because of economic changes, but because of political ones: Perhaps the most shocking study the authors cite comes from Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton University. Gilens has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s

Why Hollywood is Struggling

2011-03-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

"Let's look ahead to what's on the menu for [Hollywood] this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation

The Travels of the Constitution

2011-02-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

In this time of the Tea Party's overheated reverence for the Constitution, the tale of the document's travels from the Pennsylvania State House to its modern home in the National Archives might provide some perspective. "...the secretary of the convention carried the original to New York to present it to Congress, which met, at the time, at City Hall. Without either endorsing or opposing it,

Romantic Comedies are Warping Children's Minds

2011-02-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Hollywood’s romantic comedies aren’t just innocuous cinematic tripe. They’re actually warping children’s minds (pdf), according to new research from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. The films, including Notting Hill and You’ve Got Mail are skewed portrayals of relationships with “both highly idealistic and undesirable qualities,” the researchers write, where romantic problems or

The Role of the Film Critic

2011-01-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

We [critics] can talk about composition and cutting and long takes vs. short takes and video vs. film endlessly; God knows I have. And we can put movies in context of the industry or TV or the Internet or wider trends in the arts. And we should; we absolutely should. But it's also important for critics to remind themselves daily of the fact—the fact! not opinion, fact!—that most viewers don't

Science Proves You're Stupid

2011-01-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

Author Joe Quirk takes a tour through modern psychology and brain science to come up with some of the latest thinking on cognition. Here are some of the claims he makes: Your memories are fiction. Your memories can be selectively erased. Reason is never the reason you do things. You're the worst judge of yourself. You don't know why you like or dislike people. A highly thought-provoking read

Idling Engines are the Devil's Workshop

2011-01-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

New York City has made it illegal to let your vehicle engine idle for more than a minute in a school zone. With the new ordinance, the city joins several other cities and states in going after idling engines as a pollution source and health hazard. Read the rest of the article here.

The Quality of Forgiveness?

2011-01-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

If [the Philadelphia Eagles] do go all the way to the championship game, expect it to become one of the biggest sports stories of the year. And be prepared for a debate that ranges far beyond football – to the quality of forgiveness, to whether the depravity suggested by his crimes can ever really be exorcised, to the age-old truth that despite the commercial myth connecting character and the

A Billion Dollar Idea

2011-01-04T19:00:00.000-08:00

I have a great idea. Let's organize a "Junior Broadway" program across the nation. Let's let college drama programs compete against each other for the right to perform on Broadway stages. If we like the touring Broadway productions now ("The Lion King" was sold out virtually its entire run here in Spokane), let's expand them, and have these productions run in cities across the nation. For

If Our Machines Use Less Energy, Will We Just Use Them More?

2010-12-30T00:19:00.000-08:00

"Jonathan Bloom, who runs the Web site wastedfood.com and is the author of the new book American Wasteland, [said] that, since the mid-nineteen-seventies, per-capita food waste in the United States has increased by half, so that we now throw away forty per cent of all the edible food we produce. And when we throw away food we don't just throw away nutrients; we also throw away the energy we used

From Ace Ventura to Desmond Tutu

2010-12-28T19:07:00.000-08:00

Once the most celebrated comedy director in the business, having made a fortune with hits like “The Nutty Professor,” “Liar Liar” and “Bruce Almighty,” [Tom] Shadyac is now a Hollywood dropout. Now 51, he hasn’t made a feature film since “Evan Almighty” in 2007. He sold a 17,000-square-foot mansion in Pasadena and moved into a trailer park in north Malibu. He’s been giving away most of his money

The Critic as Catalyst

2010-12-27T22:14:00.000-08:00

A catalyzer, in chemistry, is a substance that helps too other substances to react. For example, consider the case of ordinary cane sugar and water. Dissolve the sugar in water and nothing happens. But add a few drops of acid and the sugar changes to glucose and fructose. Meanwhile, the acid itself is absolutely unchanged. All it does is to stir up the reaction between the water and the sugar.

Screw iTunes

2010-12-26T10:05:00.000-08:00

Amazon is kind of going nuts right now, offering many 2010 releases for $5 each. The first three are among my favorite records of the year, and I have heard many great things about the last two. I And Love And You by The Avett Brothers Infinite Arms by Band of Horses The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man on Earth Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons Broken Bells by Broken Bells

The Decemberists -- Hazards of Love

2010-12-22T18:53:00.000-08:00

Just downloaded this--it's the only Decembrists record I like. It's only $5 on Amazon mp3.