While doing the research for my previous post, A Slaughterhouse of One's Own: A community confronts Santeria, I came across several explanations of exactly how animal sacrifice works in this religion, physically and metaphorically speaking. The animal is bound and its throat is cut. The carotid artery is sliced with…
I received the following from a friend of mine, who sent it to his local paper as well. I’ve asked his permission to post it here, in its entirety. It concerns an issue which, while we may hope represents an unfortunate part of our history long outgrown, still rears its…
There are other ways to keep older minds active. These other activities involve contributing to society rather than hiding out with a word puzzle.
I am really getting tired of reading articles that advise “elderly” people to pass the hours doing crossword puzzles in order to keep their minds healthy and active. It’s really hard to think of anything more self-centered or useless then sitting at home, alone, and filling in the little squares to pass the time. Maybe it’s the sort of thing you would do if stranded in a lifeboat, waiting to be rescued, but why spend your precious hours on Earth this way when there are so many valuable ways to spend your time?
Am I exaggerating when I suggest there is a lot of this misguided crossword puzzle advice directed to elderly people? Not at all. You can spend an entire day reading articles if you Google “elderly crossword puzzle mind.” Check out this story from NPR. And take a look at this and this and this.
Who are the “elderly” in the context of these articles? Presumably everyone who’s elderly or becoming elderly. Presumably, that includes everyone who’s not “young.” The bottom line of these articles is that we must do crossword puzzles or else our minds will atrophy. These article argue that our brains won’t shrivel up as long as we contemplate “14 across” and “43 down” (at least until we give up and look up the answer). Telling a person to play …
In his new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman cites some statling numbers regarding American attitudes toward miscegenation. The good news is that we are changing for the better, at least viewed in the long term: Beyond the blunt, crude fact that America is getting less white, there's…
According to National Geographic’s Genographic Project, we are all African. The DNA tests taken in many isolated native populations conclusively demonstrate that we are all no more than 2000 generations removed from Africa. If you’d like, sign up and learn the path of your own migration out of Africa for…