Sad but true: We've allowed our neighborhoods to become so dangerous we can't just let our kids be kids anymore.
I'm a new father. Like many new parents, I've been giving a lot of thought to how I want to raise my child. And just as this became my life's primary mission, there emerged this phenomenon of "free range kids." An anti-helicopter parenting movement was just what I wanted.
OMG, Michelle Obama looked practically bald on "Jeopardy!" last night!
Those rotten kids and all that texting, I tell you. With the way they abbreviate and make up acronyms and leave grammar behind, they are just ruinin' the English language, ruinin' it, I tell you.
But hold on there, not so fast:
Yikes. Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism is cutting staff positions and plans to gradually reduce enrollment "as the news industry retrenches."
Is this print's last gasp? Both the New York times and the Los Angeles Times have announced that meetings to pitch stories for Page 1 are a thing of the past:
Following are the opening sentences of two sports stories. Can you tell which one was written by a human being and which was generated by a computer algorithm?
Juxtaposition of the day. First up, from Slate:
Boy, the mayor of Boston is a real wet blanket. First, he tells people to stop jumping out of second-story windows for fun, even if the snow is high enough to cushion their fall, and now he's cracking down on parking:
BOSTON - The mayor of Boston says residents who worked tirelessly to carve out parking spots during the city's multiple blizzards can no longer claim stake on those spots.
Not here, of course. We're all just good buddies, right? But elsewhere in our life, we could do with a little more formality:
Americans are spending more than ever on their pets. The tally for 2014 is an estimated $58.5 billion, according to the American Pet Products Association. After food, the biggest amount—$15.2 billion—went to veterinary care. With MRIs, sonograms, and chemotherapy all on the treatment menu, the health costs for many pets can top what well-insured humans pay for their own health care.
