| The Secret Technique for Learning How to Code |
[31 Aug 2015|08:59am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/08/what_coding_class_should_i_take_programming_is_like_learning_a_new_language.html “You don’t need to go to grad school. Save your money. I’ll teach you how to code.” Seven years ago, in a bar near downtown Los Angeles, I was sharing a drink with a new friend. We had met on a travel website and he had just finished giving me some excellent advice about Southeast Asia, where I was heading for a month. He’d asked me what I was planning on doing when I got back. I told him I was moving to Chicago for my master’s degree. He told me I was crazy.
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| Bad Actor |
[31 Aug 2015|09:01am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/08/intro_to_acting_college_class_take_a_course_you_re_terrible_at_and_practice.html When choosing courses to take in college, most people go in one of two directions: hewing closely to their major and padding their GPA with easy general education requirements, or looking for the one course that will unlock their hidden passions and forever alter the way in which they approach life. What these paths have in common is the assumption that college should be oriented toward finding the intersection of one’s talents and one’s passion in order to prepare for a fulfilling life.
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| What Are the Odds? |
[31 Aug 2015|09:01am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/classes/2015/08/take_a_statistics_and_probability_class_in_college_to_improve_critical_thinking.html If there’s one skill almost everyone agrees schools should be teaching, it’s critical thinking, although what, exactly, critical thinking consists of is conveniently left undefined. For the longest time, I preferred to believe that it meant learning to be skeptical about words, specifically the arguments, exhortations, and beguilements foisted upon the public by politicians, advertisers, corporations, and the dodgier elements of the press. As a former English major, I figured I had this one nailed; if there was anything I mastered in college, it’s the ability to find the hidden and sometimes manipulative meanings in language.
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| Famous Last Words |
[31 Aug 2015|09:57am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2015/08/the_popular_viral_obituaries_of_dorothy_mcelhaney_coleen_singer_and_marianne.html The death of an elderly former housewife normally does not make the news beyond her hometown. But when Dorothy McElhaney died on Aug. 8 at age 104, her obituary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch demanded attention. “It pains me to admit it, but apparently, I have passed away,” the 1,300-word message began. After sharing memories of her Missouri childhood of pie suppers and square dances, she ended with some advice. “Do your best, follow your arrow and make something amazing out of your life. Oh, and never stop smiling.” McElhaney’s folksy self-eulogy began spreading online almost as quickly as it appeared. In retrospect it seemed destined to be shared: The details were nostalgia-inducing (a one-room schoolhouse! “railway hobos”!), while the inducement to cherish every moment and the vague, nonreligious reassurance that the deceased is now “dancing” were thoroughly modern.
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| Escaping the Poisonous Womb of Home |
[31 Aug 2015|02:55pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/08/the_story_of_the_lost_child_the_fourth_of_elena_ferrante_s_neapolitan_novels.html Very few people know the true identity of the Italian novelist who writes under the pen name Elena Ferrante, but I’d be willing to bet serious money that if we ever learn the truth, her personal history won’t contain a childhood friend very much like Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo. Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels, the last of which, The Story of the Lost Child, is now being published in its English translation (by Ann Goldstein), have captivated a certain rarified segment of the reading public—mostly women of a literary bent. Fans justly celebrate the addictive properties of these books, a saga that encompasses the entire life of its narrator, a writer named Elena Greco, organizing it around her relationship to Lila, her best friend from their early days growing up in a tough, poor neighborhood in 1950s Naples. Just about everyone assumes the novels are autobiographical, and describes their subject as the ambivalent wonders of “female friendship,” which makes them sound like a tonier version of Sex and the City, only with a lot more fights between the heroines.
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| Escaping the Poisonous Womb of Home |
[31 Aug 2015|02:55pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/08/the_story_of_the_lost_child_the_fourth_of_elena_ferrante_s_neapolitan_novels.html Very few people know the true identity of the Italian novelist who writes under the pen name Elena Ferrante, but I’d be willing to bet serious money that if we ever learn the truth, her personal history won’t contain a childhood friend very much like Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo. Ferrante’s four Neapolitan novels, the last of which, The Story of the Lost Child, is now being published in its English translation (by Ann Goldstein), have captivated a certain rarified segment of the reading public—mostly women of a literary bent. Fans justly celebrate the addictive properties of these books, a saga that encompasses the entire life of its narrator, a writer named Elena Greco, organizing it around her relationship to Lila, her best friend from their early days growing up in a tough, poor neighborhood in 1950s Naples. Just about everyone assumes the novels are autobiographical, and describes their subject as the ambivalent wonders of “female friendship,” which makes them sound like a tonier version of Sex and the City, only with a lot more fights between the heroines.
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| My Brilliant Mother |
[31 Aug 2015|02:57pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/08/my_mother_translated_elena_ferrante_s_the_story_of_the_lost_child_from_italian.html As a fairly obsessive, bookish kid, I frequently stayed up all night, flashlight under the covers, to finish a particularly good story. My adult life usually precludes this kind of behavior, but sometimes, given the right prod, I find I’m not all that different from the girl I was then. The last time this happened was about a year ago, when I finished Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend at 3 a.m. on a weeknight, immediately downloaded the sequel, The Story of a New Name, and started its first chapter. Part of the compulsion was structural—Ferrante writes very short chapters and cliffhanger endings—but it also came from an urgent feeling of connection to the characters, as if they were tugging me along on their turbulent path.
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| Yonkers’ Affordable-Housing Fight Isn’t Over |
[31 Aug 2015|05:03pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/business/metropolis/2015/08/show_me_a_hero_finale_an_interview_with_yonkers_housing_authority_chief.html For the last two weeks, HBO’s six-episode social drama Show Me a Hero spotlighted a topic that doesn’t tend to get a lot of attention from Hollywood: affordable-housing policy. Co-written by David Simon, the showrunner of The Wire, Show Me a Hero documents the polarizing conflict over the court-ordered construction of 200 units of public housing on the predominantly white east side of Yonkers. While—hey, spoiler alert—the series ended in tragedy for Nick Wasicsko, the young mayor portrayed by Oscar Isaac, it closes in triumph for the residents lucky enough to win one of the new units. But what is the fate of Yonkers, and its public housing, more than 20 years after the court case and subsequent political battle that Show Me a Hero dramatized?
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