By Amanda I have a special place in my heart for heretics and oddballs, misfits and malcontents. Always have. I remember the first time I saw the movie Joan of Arc, I thought she was amazing, not necessarily because I thought she was right, but because she thought she was right and at the very […]
WRITING
Eating the Food that Your Food Eats
Lately I have been thinking a lot about food. I’m about halfway through Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, in which the author argues that “Nutritionism” has taught us to be rather reductionistic about how we think about the whole eating thing. We think too much about nutrients like fats, carbs, and proteins, with actual food […]
Psst! Slaves? We’re Calling It Even….
OK, howsabout a little test, shall we? The other day a well-known political pundit offered the following remarks about this year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture, Twelve Years a Slave : “There’s no way that movie was not going to win!… There was no way — it didn’t matter if it’s good or bad; I haven’t seen it — […]
Ethnocentrism Goes Better with Coke!
As many of you will be aware, Coca Cola aired what turned out to be a rather controversial commercial during the Super Bowl a couple weekends ago. Now if you had been informed beforehand about an upcoming controversial Coke ad, you probably would have thought, “Oooh, so what’s the scandal? Scantily-clad women drinking Coke? Super […]
Farewell, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Like many others, I reacted with shock and sadness when I heard about the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (I’m actually currently in the middle of watching one of his most recent films, The Master ). And the manner of his death — a heroin overdose — made the news that much worse. Tragedies […]
Nostalgia: It Ain’t What It Used To Be
Here’s the thing about me: I am really, really nostalgic, and one of the effects of this has always been that hearing songs from my past has a profound impact on me. I can often be whisked back to my youth in a moment and recall things that I haven’t thought about in years, just […]