Tag: Obsession

Oscar Wilde wrote in 1889, “In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.” Japanese culture has been Orientalized, romanticized, and exoticized for over a hundred years. The result? Much of the (Western?) world has come to think th...

Much as Donald Trump seems to think that economic policy focuses on how much money he can bring in in campaign funds from selling his criminal mugshot, it does seem necessary to consider what he would do about economics should his presidential hopes keep sustaining themselves. Every poll, every p...

My first introduction to Scrabble was an obligatory family game night experience. As a child, I had often gazed at those wooden tiles, trying to form words, with the elusive Q and Z tiles often remaining a mystery. Little did I know that years later, this simple word game would offer me solace, pers...

I asked for and received and pair of binoculars for Christmas in 2022. Then, while I was up visiting my in-laws in Pennsylvania by brother-in-law mentioned something called eBird. He said it was a place to find out where hard to find birds had been spotted, as well as a place to keep track of the bi...

Istill remember how back in the day (about a decade ago) LinkedIn was one of the big two social networks along with Facebook. Facebook was for your friends and LinkedIn was for your work. And given how important work is to people (we all need money to pay the bills after all), LinkedIn with by far t...

Blaise Pascal once observed that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly in a room for 30 minutes. We’ll spend money on things we barely want, embark on crazy journeys, or even take over countries to pacify our minds. We’re like monkeys taking directions f...

Listening to a true crime podcast today about Ed Kemper, I was thinking about all the people fascinated by him, having books on him, watching documentaries and films on him, and thinking about who he truly is. He is human garbage. It may be interesting to try and understand Kemper for a while but...

“You don’t get a perfect trial. You get a fair trial,” says Meghan Sacks, associate professor of criminology and director of the undergraduate criminology program at FDU’s Florham Campus. Did Melanie McGuire get a fair trial? Did she murder her husband? Sacks and collea...

Why are some white people so obsessed with using the N-word? This goes beyond breaking a taboo; it's a glaring symptom of a deep-rooted issue in white culture. It's not just about a word; it's about a legacy of power, control, and an unsettling sense of entitlement over Black culture. ...

Despite the obsession with race in the US, most people don’t know what race is and/or often confuse it with ethnicity. There are only a handful of racial groups and over 193 ethnicities so it’s impossible to guess someone’s ethnic background, and that number doesn’t even incl...

Betsy Drake was a successful New York stage actress who moved to Los Angeles at the urging of boyfriend Cary Grant. In 1948, she starred opposite Grant in her first film Every Girl Should Be Married. She and Grant married the following year. It was her first marriage and Grant’s third. Dr...

Now, tell me — does this sound familiar? As midnight rolls around, you’re firmly planted in front of your laptop, eyes fixated on the glowing screen. You’re feverishly writing like you’re possessed by some Shakespearean spirit. Morning looms, and you’ll be showing up to...

I am a teacher and sometimes I can’t help but overhear some conversations in the classroom. The other day I was astonished when I heard: “But that makeup won’t look good on you, you have a moon face, and it won’t change anytime soon so you should just accept it” When...