Essays
1093 results
Page 66
Terry Williams case: Score one for justice
The condemned man and his prosecutors
In the latest installment of the Terry Williams murder case, Philadelphia Judge Teresa Sarmina delivered a scathing rebuke to the district attorney's office for concealing evidence that could have spared a man from death row. But District Attorney Seth Williams continues to press for the execution to proceed, thereby aligning himself with the city's often-sordid capital jurisprudence of the 1980s.
Essays
9 minute read
On spotting homosexuals
You're gay? How could I tell?
When gays come out of the closet, I'm never shocked, because I'm endowed with terrific gaydar— the ability to recognize homosexuals. Does this gift mean I might be a latent lesbian myself?
Essays
5 minute read
Remembrance of a first love
My kindergarten romance that haunts me to this day
Like most adults, I've had my share of encounters with death. But nothing haunts me quite like the senseless loss of my first childhood love, perhaps because the emotions I felt then were so genuine.
Essays
4 minute read
Pennsylvania's rusty machinery of death
Welcome to the Middle Ages, or: Capital punishment, Pennsylvania style
The recent clemency hearing in Harrisburg for Death Row prisoner Terry Williams, Pennsylvania's first such hearing in 50 years, was like a trip much further back in time. Whether or not you favor the death penalty, no one seems to like the system, including those who enforce it.
Essays
7 minute read
Louis Kahn's last masterpiece
Louis Kahn's life after death
Louis Kahn, a great, humble and idealistic architect, died broke and obscure in 1974. But his vision continues to bear fruit, most recently in New York City's new Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park.
Essays
4 minute read
What my five-year-old could teach the Tea Party
Found: Hope for the future, in my 80s
What can an octogenarian father possibly learn from his five-year-old son? If the subject is human evolution, the answer is: plenty.
Essays
3 minute read
"Girls' and the new feminism (a reply)
If women are liberated, how come we're not happy?
Thanks to those pioneering feminists of the '70s, women are now free to pursue careers just like men. But my 20-something generation is discovering the emotional costs of conventional success.
Essays
3 minute read
Art Heyman: Athlete stuck in time
To an athlete who couldn't let go
The college basketball star Art Heyman died last week in Florida at age 71 without having solved the mystery he confronted in his 20s: After the glory faded, who was he?
Essays
4 minute read
Neil Armstrong: Cold War by-product (2nd comment)
The hero as team player: Neil Armstrong and modern mythology
The self-effacing Neil Armstrong went to the Moon for all the wrong reasons, and the manned space flight program is now in mothballs. Yet future ages may remember the Moon landing as the signal event of the 20th Century.
Essays
6 minute read
Neil Armstrong: the engineer as celebrity (1st comment)
The exasperating modesty of the first man on the Moon
Neil Armstrong's self-effacing manner mystified the news media. They wanted a celebrity; he gave them an engineer. But it's the modest technologists like Armstrong, not the publicity-hungry actors and politicians, who transform our lives.
Essays
4 minute read