Articles Related to Culture

Spencer Gets a Pet

Synopsis:  I'm allergic to cats and dogs, but had them all my life.  For the first time in ages I've been able to live pet-free.  Spencer, however, wanted a pet at daddy's house, and my giving in to his wish invokes many truisms about autism, identity, individuality, and even polytheism.

Excerpt:  His guinea pig is actually his third, at least.  Like Darren Stevens on Bewitched, the original went away, and the producers brought in a replacement, acting like nothing had happened.  The only ones fooled, of course, would be viewers like Spencer who don't really look at faces.  Every few months Spencer would report that his guinea pig suddenly got a little bigger or smaller, or went from being hyper to very mellow.  Shape-shifting isn't enough to suggest to Spencer that a creature or person in the same role is actually a different person.

Overstimulation

Synopsis:  I discuss a parent's dilemma between leading an adult life and providing adequate guidance and care for one's child.  How much of what we do is misguided, and how can we know?  A history of hysteria meets the age-old questions of "how much TV?" and "what qualifies as overstimulation?"

Excerpt:  Would you believe that when writing became increasingly available to the masses in early Western history, prominent thinkers railed against it as unhealthy? Socrates railed against the spread of literacy, as he believed it would dwarf the memories of men (the Greek word for read is "anaginosko," literally "to know again," as paper and ink spare the scholar the task of remembering). Indeed, from the dawn of human civilization, bards relayed epic tales, such as Homer's Ilyad, purely from memory.

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