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The Art of Digital Flirtation

Nick Paumgartentakes a deep look at the role of new computer media in our romantic lives:

"In 2010, fee-based dating Web sites grossed over a billion dollars. According to a recent study commissioned by Match.com, online is now the third most common way for people to meet. (The most common are “through work/school” and “through friends/family.”) One in six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating sites. (Nobody’s counting one-night stands.) For many people in their twenties, accustomed to conducting much of their social life online, it is no less natural a way to hook up than the church social or the night-club-bathroom line." . . . continue

STTA

• One hardly knows where to begin with such a pervasive topic. Here's a simple question: What role does new social media play in dating or meeting new people generally?

Meatless Mondays

Food writer Mark Bittman considers the broad ramifications of the growing national movement for Meatless Mondays:

"Our insatiable appetite for animal protein is as much of an agricultural liability as it is a nutritional one. We raise and slaughter nearly 10 billion farm animals in the United States every year (and that’s not counting fish or dairy animals.) It follows, then, that a significant percentage of our corn and soy crops are used to feed the animals that give us our much-wanted (and less-needed) protein. The intensive system of animal and crop production that is fueled by our demand for meat and milk and cheese leads to all manners of abuses: animal, environmental, farm-worker — you name it." . . . continue

STTA

• Have you heard of Meatless Mondays? How do you feel about the idea?
• Which of Bittman argues do you find most and least compelling?

Does Language Make Us More Empathetic?

Blogger Andrew Sullivan neatly summarizes a debate between two poets, Yusef Komunyaka and Mark Doty: Does our power to visualize and then feel an experience through language have any real impact on how we act in the real world? . . .  continue

STTA

• We want to believe that our imagination is part of our larger faculty for human sympathy, don't we? But is it? Who you side with in this debate, Komunyaka or Doty?

Should Executions Should Be Televised?

Zachary Shemtob and David Lat, two law professors, re-open a century-old debate:

"Right now, executions are generally open only to the press and a few select witnesses. For the rest of us, the vague contours are provided in the morning paper. Yet a functioning democracy demands maximum accountability and transparency. As long as executions remain behind closed doors, those are impossible. The people should have the right to see what is being done in their name and with their tax dollars.". . .  continue

STTA

• So much of our politics is divided into red and blue, but one wonders if this might be a question that crosses those traditional divide: How do you feel about this question, and how does your feeling relate to your other political views?

15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

"The Global Language Monitor estimates that there are currently 1,009,753 words in the English language. Despite this large lexicon, many nuances of human experience still leave us tongue-tied. And that’s why sometimes it’s necessary to turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are fifteen foreign words with no direct English equivalent." - continue

STTA

• Which of these 15 is your favorite? Can you think of other English multi-word phrases that could conceivably be reduced to a single word?

Demands of Monogamy

Melissa Matthes argues against the widespread notion that all desire is good, as long it does not entail "children, pets, incest and the dead":

Her position: "Not because I think we should be policing sexual desire in some draconian, puritan way, but because it is still worthwhile for each of us to explore in more detail how desires are cultivated, why we want what we want, and, perhaps, what is the difference between “real” and “artificial” wants." - More here

STTA

• In many ways, monogamy is as strange as it is normal. One puzzler: Why do so many of us pledge ourselves to it -- and, even stranger, why do many of us (albeit undoubtedly fewer overall) actually conform to its demands?

Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance

Mark Bittman's opinion piece in New York Times

"That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids."  -- More here


STTA

• Here is the primary political battle in the U.S. in a nutshell: Defining or limiting the proper role of government in our lives. Corporations have a clear and simple response: Let the parents decide. Your thoughts?
  

Remembering an Inspiring Teacher

Dave Eggers tells a wonderful story about his high school English teacher,

"But near the end of the semester, we read "Macbeth." Believe me, this is not an easy play to connect to the lives of suburban high schoolers, but somehow he made the play seem electric, dangerous, relevant. After procrastinating till the night before it was due, I wrote a paper about the play -- the first paper I typed on a typewriter -- and turned it in the next day.

"I got a good grade on it, and below the grade Mr. Criche wrote, "Sure hope you become a writer." That was it. Just those six words, written in his signature handwriting -- a bit shaky, but with a very steady baseline. It was the first time he or anyone had indicated in any way that writing was a career option for me." - Reprinted at Salon.com

STTA

• This piece originally appeared on TeacherLove.org, an online forum for sharing stories about teachers that have made a difference. If you have a story you'd like to share, please submit it here

Marriage - A Better Deal for Men?

Amanda Hess makes a strong case

"Married men make more money and get more promotions than single guys. They live longer, have less heart disease, drink less, smoke less weed, and experience less stress. Meanwhile, married women have less fulfilling sex lives and less free time than their husbands. They also have smaller paychecks. (They do get to keep smoking the same amount of weed). These factors help explain why women are less into marriage than men are."

STTA

• One assumes there's nothing really that surprising here; why then are we surprised to hear it stated so bluntly?
• Hess also has some interesting observations on marriage and weight gain. Do they match your expectations?

Plutocracy

"“Do the wealthy have disproportionate political influence in the United States?” then the answer is obviously 'yes', and that answer would qualify as one of the most unsurprising imaginable. . . . We mean not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others." - Francis Fukuyama, "Left Out"

STTA

• Here is clearly one of the pressing questions of our day: Why as a whole we seem, in balance, protective of the wealth of, not just the wealthy, but the super-wealthy--people who net worth is measured in the billions? What are your thoughts on this controversial topic?

Slang

The great Samuel Johnson derided slang as "fugitive cant, which is always in state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation." - James Sharpe, "The Takeaway Language of Slang"

STTA

• The status of slang is always an issue -- especially, who can use it, and when. What is your definition of slang?
• Slang always seem to bubble up from edges of the social order. See if you can find some contemporary examples of the language of outsiders finding widespread currency?

The Power of One

"You hear it all the time: We humans are social animals. We need to spend time together to be happy and functional, and we extract a vast array of benefits from maintaining intimate relationships and associating with groups. Collaborating on projects at work makes us smarter and more creative. Hanging out with friends makes us more emotionally mature and better able to deal with grief and stress." -- Leon Neyfakh, "The Power of Lonely"
STTA

• Yes, we do hear a lot about the our social nature, but surely there is power in solitude. How would you describe that power? What is it that we learn from ourselves?
• It is also a commonplace -- and maybe true -- that it has become harder for us to be alone: Do you agree?

Luddites

"In an essay in 1984—at the dawn of the personal computer era—the novelist Thomas Pynchon wondered if it was “O.K. to be a Luddite,” meaning someone who opposes technological progress. A better question today is whether it’s even possible. Technology is everywhere, and a recent headline at an Internet humor site perfectly captured how difficult it is to resist: 'Luddite invents machine to destroy technology quicker.'" -- Richard Conniff, "What the Luddites Really Fought Against"

STTA

• What is your understanding of the term luddite? Do you agree that it has become largely a perjorative term?
• Do a bit a research including reading Conniff's article, and you will see that a key issue then (and maybe today) is jobs. Do you believe the commonplace notion that new technologies lead to more and better jobs for workers?

Golden State

"In 1949, Carey McWilliams, the state’s greatest journalist, called California “the great exception” among states: no textbook or precedent existed to explain its monstrous growth, its powerful labor movement, its superb education system, or its abundance-creating, super-exploitative farm system." - Nikil Saval, "Golden State"

STTA. It really was not all that long ago when California seemed to represent the best of our country's future--the land of milk and honey, figuratively speaking, we were all heading. Now, as Saval's article suggests, it may represent our future in another, less pleasant way: the financial decay and decline in the quality of life gripping the country as a whole. Your thoughts: Is it really that bad?

The Femme Fatale

"She’s in trouble, she says, and needs his help. He hesitates a second while his brain tries to work. Whatever her problem is — something about her husband working her over, the sick bastard — she can take care of herself, from the looks of her. But hello, the looks of her: those long legs, those tremulous lips, those wounded eyes. This dame isn’t in trouble, she is trouble, his brain shouts — but those eyes, those eyes. He’s way past listening to his brain. The only sound he can hear is her voice, whispering that she needs him, wants him, can’t live without him. And if his brain turns out to be right, if she ends up dragging him down into depravity, madness and murder, well, tough. If there was ever a thing worth going straight to hell for, she’s it." -- Kevin Nance

STTA. Nance's point is straightforward: That the character-type of the femme fatale (or dangerous woman) that flourished in the detective films of the 1940s has now largely disappeared. What do you think: Can you think of films or TV shows that feature an attractive woman that systematically doom the men they attract?

The End of Privacy

"Every so often, when I'm in Amsterdam, I visit the Rijksmuseum to remind myself about the history of privacy. I go there to gaze at a picture called The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, which was painted by Jan Vermeer in 1663. It is of an unidentified Dutch woman avidly reading a letter. Vermeer's picture, to borrow a phrase from privacy advocates Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren, is a celebration of the "sacred precincts of private and domestic life". It's as if the artist had kept his distance in order to capture the young woman, cocooned in her private world, at her least socially visible." - Andrew Keen, "Your Life Torn Open"

STTA. Keen's article raises so many pressing issues about the value of personal privacy and threats to it, including Facebook. One thing we can focus on here is a remembrance of the sanctity, the specialness of a private moment. Yes, there really may be a way to share it in writing without spoiling it.

‘Whoa, that is so wow!’

"I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel." -- "What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness" - Clark Whelton

STTA. Are things as bad as Whelton suggests? Do we really live in an age that seems allergic to concrete, specific expression? 

Stuttering

"The stutterer's voice is the central focus of The King's Speech and a good part of the reason, I suspect, the movie has achieved its outsize resonance. This is because the stutterer's voice points toward a paradox of verbal culture: Language was born of a need to communicate orally and in the moment, and yet, at its most influential, language is so little dependent on spontaneous speech that even someone permanently stymied on that front—a stutterer—can eke out a message that commands a nation." - Nathan Heller


STTA. Stuttering is one of any number of disabilities that is not immediately visible. Reflect on the different ways we react to disabilities that are clearly visible and those that are partly or largely hidden.

Manning Up

"Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men." -- Kay S. Hymowitz

STTA: It's a truly fascinating article, with lots of pop culture images, of typically "lost" 20-something men. So what's with this "pre-adulthood": Do you think it really exists, and, if so, do you agree it's mainly a a guy thing?

Super Prices for Superheroes

"Kapow! Comic books are no longer just kiddy lit. Far from it. The numbers speak for themselves. In March 2010, Action Comics #1—the first appearance of Superman—sold for $1.5 million on an online auction site, making it the most expensive and valuable comic book of all time." -- Jonathan Shipley

STTA. Based on your own experience, what's your sense of the appeal of comic books? What did you collect as a kid? What would you like to collect now, if you could afford to?

What Makes a Song Sad?

 The popular belief is that, "at least for Western music, songs written in a major key (like "Happy Birthday") are generally upbeat, while those in a minor key (think of The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby") tend towards the doleful." -- What Makes a Song Sad

STTA. An interesting sidebar to this piece in The Atlantic lists songs that make folks cry. Take a look and see if you agree -- or, better yet, list some of your own favorite sad songs, and tell us what makes them so special.

Apple vs Google

"One is a gadget-maker, the other a search engine—but now they are at odds. Robert Lane Greene on a clash of cultures . . ." From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine (Winter 2010)

STTA. Here's a fascinating look at two companies fighting, not just our business, but for our souls -- or maybe, even more, for our cellphones. In the past the companies have been quite different: For starters, the one-of-a-kind iPhone versus the multi-version android phone. What's your experience with these two Silicon Valley behemoths?

Puzzler

"Puzzle-solving is such an ancient, universal practice, scholars say, precisely because it depends on creative insight, on the primitive spark that ignited the first campfires." - from Benedict Carey's "Tracing the Spark of Creative Problem-Solving"

STTA. The contention here is that there's something especially important in puzzle-solving to the trajectory of human culture. It all starts with a mental state about to play. Based on your experience solving puzzles, what do you think?

Texting, Friending -- The New Verbs

Anthony Gardener takes an amusing look at an undeniable trend: "Mothers and fathers used to bring up children: now they parent. Critics used to review plays: now they critique them. Athletes podium, executives flipchart, and almost everybody Googles. Watch out—you’ve been verbed." -- "You've Been Verbed"

STTA. One thing for sure: The trend that Gardener describes has the quality of a tidal wave. Generally, English teachers tend to be a bit conservative in such matters, but one wonders: Is there really anything to worry about? What does Gardener think? What do you?

The First War on Terror

"In the late 19th century, as today, a terrorist cabal detonated bombs in the heart of the Western world. Judged by the number of successful attacks on politicians and royalty, that force was more directly threatening to the inner circles of power than today’s radical Islam." -- Brian Doherty's review of The World That Never Was (Reason)

STTA. It's easy to ignore the fact that Europe and the U.S. both had their own home-grown terrorists over a century ago--Anarchists, dedicated to using indiscriminate urban violence to achieve political ends. Doherty's reviews suggests lessons we can learn for our current struggle with politically-inspired violence.

Libertarianism

"Libertarianism is a long, clunky word for a simple, elegant idea: that government should do as little as possible. . . . [but] it doesn’t fit into the two-party paradigm. Libertarians want less state intrusion into the market, which aligns them with Republicans, but also less interference in social choices, which aligns them with Democrats. As Massachusetts governor William Weld put it in 1992, “I want the government out of your pocketbook and your bedroom.” -- Christopher Beam, "The Trouble with Liberty"

STTA. Libertarianism has long existed on the fringe of American politics, its appeal often esoteric and intellectual--although the current Tea Party movement has both passion and a strong libertarian (anti-government) bent. Still one wonders why such a seemingly popular idea has had such a hard time gaining a mass following. Your thoughts?

The Western: New Life for an Old Genre?

"With True Grit crossing the $100 million mark at the box office, the Western, often given up for dead, appears to be back.

"Black hats, white hats, guns, a frontier code of honor, big-sky country — all have been Hollywood staples since at least 1903, when The Great Train Robbery sent gunslingers galloping across the plains of New Jersey." -- Bob Mondello @ NPR.

STTA. Film Westerns have been one of the distinctive creations of 20th-century American culture, even if their appeal has reached far across our borders. In the story quoted from above, Mondello lists 5 classic Westerns. How do you explain the enduring appeal of this genre for American audiences?