What do Gaylord Nelson and James Cameron have in common?

It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and on the surface the two men couldn't be much different. Nelson was an elder statesman, Cameron a sci-fi junkie-turned-Hollywood mega-success.

The founding father of Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson spoke words...

Disclaimer: I’m not a big fan of American holidays.  The cultural critic in me can’t help but harp on the Hallmark-ization of most of the majors.  I grew up more or less godless: my family leveraged the time off school and work to hit the slopes in Tahoe while everyone...

I have spent the last three months trying to get my nine-year old daughter to memorize her multiplication facts (through twelve).  This has been one of the more tortuous and humbling experiences of my life as a parent, and has added another few inches to the height of the pedestal...

This is your brain on TV. Upon high-school graduation, the average American student will have spent more hours watching TV than in the classroom. What might this mean? Let’s think about things these kids are not doing while they’re watching TV. They are not studying, moving their bodies, interacting with...

Out with the beaver!

Beaver is out and Blog is in. Another loss for team nature was the decision this year by the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary to replace dozens of nature-related words like "beaver" and "dandelion" with more relevant words like "blog" and "MP3 player." As noted...