My, What Gory Tales They Read
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The Catcher in the Rye. Bridge to Terabithia. Such were the scandalous teen fiction titles in the late 20th century. Though I read all of them as an adolescent in the 1980s, it wasn’t without firm counsel and concerned follow-up from adults. Later, when I took a college-level […]
Family Media Surprise
For generations, parents have told their kids, “Shut off the TV and go outside!” And in the last decade or so, we can add iPods, the Internet, cell phones and video games to the “Turn it off!” list as well. But a recent study from The Barna Group (a Christian research and polling firm) suggests […]
A Zettabyte Is Big. Really Big.
A colleague and I sometimes laugh about weird headlines. My favorites from the past week or so include “Fearsome Lawn Ornament Shot Dead by Cops,” “Proven: Sharks Love AC/DC” and “Roads to Close for Zombie Mayhem in Atlanta Suburb.” But this headline got me not for its humor, but for being totally and completely unfathomable: […]
Your Sniffer or Your Smartphone?
Even though I was an English major, I still took two classes in anatomy and physiology in college. In addition to memorizing the names of organs, muscles and processes, deciphering genetics, denaturing proteins and dissecting cats, I learned that your sense of smell helps you taste things. Got that? Your sense of smell is a […]
Chasing Death for 15 Minutes of Fame
There are professional storm-chaser videos, and then there are WHAT-are-you-thinking-you-lunatic storm–chaser videos. Not long after the most recent siege of devastating tornados ripped across the country, I saw the latter, amateurish type of video on a news site. The camera is focused on a deadly twister, and background noises include violent wind and the voices […]
Too Much Skin
I bite my tongue a lot whenever I’m let loose in public. The other day at a large, upscale mall in Denver, I almost bit it off. A toddler was dressed in high-heeled sandals, a very short skirt and a camisole. Her curly hair was pulled up in a frilly barrette and her mother was […]
Fat-Phobic and Blinded by Media
Tap, tap, tap. Hey, is this soapbox on? Because a good mini-diatribe needs amplification. A new Arizona State University study has found that (and I quote the research): [Women] were asked to choose whether they would rather be obese or have one of 12 socially stigmatized conditions, such as alcoholism or herpes. In many cases, […]
MLK and Twain Go Viral (and Awry)
Without careful eyes and fact checkers, who knows how long we, the masses, would have been in the dark. I first saw the Martin Luther King, Jr. misquote on a friend’s Facebook page. With regard to Osama Bin Laden’s death, it read, “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not […]
Pictures of Hope
Social networking often gets mixed reviews. But here’s a story about it that makes me smile. After tornadoes cut a wide swath of destruction across much of Alabama and five other southern states last week, a Facebook page was set up to reunite victims with their memorabilia—some of which was blown at least 150 miles […]
Two Billion People Watching … But, No Pressure.
It’s been the subject of years of conjecture and media hype—or, perhaps it only seems that long. And now, after a steady stream of large (often strange) hats, billions of horses, pomp, circumstance and a fabulously beautiful wedding dress, the royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton is forever recorded in history—via social media. […]