Sick and Tired of Hearing About Rising China?

Arguments Against the Narrative of China’s Ascendance and America’s Decline

Booming China—and its perils and possibilities—has become a genre all its own in the 21st century. Economists write books about the country’s dragon economy. Environmentalists warn of China’s growing need for water and oil. Political scientists predict a new world order. Meanwhile, the U.S. recession drags on, and pundits on all sides and with all manners of expertise decry America’s falling fortune. But is it inevitable that these nations’ trajectories resemble a seesaw: If one goes up, must the other go down? In advance of the Zócalo event “Is China …

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Take Me to Your Artist, Earthling

An Alien from Outer Space is Curious About Us ... Who or What Should We Turn It Onto?

Have you learned from Shakespeare? Billie Holiday? Cézanne? Meryl Streep? Most of us can name a book, song, or poem that moves us. A painting or photograph that stops us …

Suspensions, Detentions, and Lickings—Oh My

What’s Wrong With How We’re Disciplining Kids In School?

How should a high school respond when drugs are found in a student’s locker or a fight breaks out on campus? Most choose suspension or expulsion. But the zero tolerance …

Please Don’t Dream About Impressing Keith Urban

What Do We Glamorize in 2013 That We Shouldn’t?

American popular culture has long glamorized the unhealthy and unsavory. We go to the movies and watch attractive people puffing cigarettes or mafiosos strutting around in sharkskin suits killing off …

Would Somebody Please Take Julia Child to Dinner?

She’s Risen From the Grave, She’s In L.A., and She’s Hungry. But Now She Needs To Find the Right Place to Eat.

Los Angeles used to be a place that offered decent steak, sometimes, and decent chili, maybe. Haute cuisine was not our forte. But we’ve gotten a lot better over the …