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May 25, 2012
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The Kosher Gourmet by Ethel G. Hofman: The former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with contemporary Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Sweet Noodle Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread
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May 22, 2012
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May 21, 2012
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May 18, 2012
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The Kosher Gourmet by Carolyn Malcoun: DIY healthy lunchbox treats: HOMEMADE FRUIT BARS for kids and brown-bagging adults alike
May 17, 2012
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Steven Goldberg: Earn Dividends in Emerging Markets with This WisdomTree ETF
Amina Khan: Research links coffee to lower death rates
The Kosher Gourmet by Faith Duran : Cheesy Potato Breakfast Casserole with Cheddar and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
May 16, 2012
Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. : Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: A variety of exercises can help improve balance
Melissa Healy: National strategy on Alzheimer's disease aims to halt it by 2025
The Kosher Gourmet by Joyce White : GOODNESS GRACIOUS: GREENS! 4 winning recipes that are no longer just for down-home folks (Includes expert tips & techniques)
May 15, 2012
Kristen Chick: Obama administration resumes arms sales to Bahrain despite serious unresolved human rights issues. Activists feel abandoned
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Sue Hubbard, M.D.: The Kid's Doctor: Lactose intolerant young child? Check again
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May 14, 2012
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Harvard Health Letters: Heart disease and dementia
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May 11, 2012
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Jett Stone: Forget face-lifts and fake knees. Scientists have seen the fountain of youth --- and it's broccoli
The Kosher Gourmet by Chef Mario Batali: The famed chef's vegetable dish that tastes true to the season: FAVAS AND SUGAR SNAP PEAS WITH POTATOES AND TARRAGON
May 10, 2012
Sergei L. Loiko: Putin sends warning to U.S., NATO in Victory Day speech at Red Square
Mary Rourke: How being a 'mentch' got Vidal Sasoon his start and fighting in Israel's War of Independence provided him with confidence and a strong sense of his own identity
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The Kosher Gourmet by Betty Rosbottom: Gleaming with its golden, crimson, and snowy white hues, this silken smooth and creamy STRAWBERRY ORANGE TRIFLE looks impressive, but is easy to prepare
May 9, 2012
Sharon Palmer, R.D. How you can reduce your risk -- or delay -- chronic diseases associated with aging
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Jewish World Review
May 17, 2007
/ 29 Iyar, 5767
The media is the politics
By
Suzanne Fields
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The "debates" between the current crop of presidential wannabes bear little resemblance to the stirring intellectual drama of Lincoln and Douglas, but they accurately reflect our times. Short answers to trivial questions for short attention spans. There's little opportunity for eloquence in a sound bite and it's not likely that television audiences would stay tuned if there were.
Politics is a victim of the electronic culture, just as the voter who chooses his candidate based on it. When body language becomes as important as verbal expression, when intellect is reduced to image, caricature inevitably becomes substance. In less than half a century, our culture has undergone a radical transformation in how we process information. That's the good news. The bad news is that it can only get worse.
The shift from reliance on carefully wrought ideas, developed through language, to learning through imagery, is almost total. It starts in the crib. A new study reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine finds that 40 percent of babies under three months watch television regularly and 90 percent of children under the age of 2 do. These babies have not yet been counted in the Nielsen ratings, but they have established their favorite shows, often the ones their parents watch.
In a random telephone survey of 1,000 parents of children ages two months to 2 years in Washington state and Minnesota, parents said they let their babies watch television for "fun and education." Few of them admit they use the tube as an electronic babysitter.
In other studies, doctors suggest that babies who watch television experience changes in their brain development at a time when they should be learning to talk through association with the larger of their species. Tweens and teens who overdose on television are more at risk for making poor habits of learning, leading to poor grades.
Adults who grew up in a transitional society with a strong reliance on the written word are more likely to use the electronic media selectively. But the percentages are declining. We joke that we rely on our children to teach us how to program our computers and cell phones (who's joking?), and we don't think much about what our kids have lost in the bargain.
The shift from the printed page to what we see on a flickering screen has wide-ranging ramifications for how we think. The printed newspaper is losing circulation as its readers move to the Internet and television, which means the gatekeepers of information are becoming a different breed, too. That's why Rupert Murdoch's bid to buy the Wall Street Journal from the nurturing Bancroft family has struck horror in the hearts of newspaper readers.
We're losing the patience developed through reflection and perception provided by leisurely reading long and complex books, or even magazine articles and the op-ed pages. Camille Paglia, who writes about culture, likens the young to the astronaut in Stanley Kubrick's epic film "2001: A Space Odyssey," who spins helplessly in space when a master computer goes amok. "The new generation, raised on TV and the personal computer but deprived of a solid primary education, has become unmoored from the mother ship of culture, " she writes in "The Magic of Images," an analysis of the ways education fails the young. The young are flooded with disconnected images and fragments of ideas. They're left without the ability to make or sometimes even understand coherent argument.
Most of the current political candidates are smart and well educated, but they dumb down content to fit the audience, tailoring their messages to a shrinking framework. Youngsters for whom flickering images become more important than an expanded vocabulary built up through books depend ever more on the acceleration of the delivery of dribs and drabs of information. "The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual work and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning," says Paglia.
How we process information tears down the wall between the popular culture of entertainment and the side of politics that enables us to critically assess character and measure intellectual content. When I watch from my treadmill episodes of the television series "24," which depends on intense action drawing on images guided by fast-moving technology, I run twice as fast as when I watch the news. When it's over I look forward to settling back into the printed word. The tiny tots raised in front of the television screen may never learn to do that.
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© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
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