Category Archives: Art and Culture

Why The Liberal Arts?

  It’s difficult to hear a discussion of education in the United States without being reminded of the urgency of increasing students’ proficiency in ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines.  This, we learn, is necessary to secure their competitiveness in a technology-driven job market.  What is too rarely pointed out is that a primary […]

January 23, 2014 – 10:02 am | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Colleges and Universities, Education, History of Ideas, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Lessons From Our Table

One of the blessings of the past holiday for this Maine parent was the return of adult children home for Christmas.  Humorists console some of us with tales of dysfunctional families to help dispel the mixed emotions conjured up by the holidays.  A largely functional family is also a blessing. Ours has slogged its way […]

January 7, 2013 – 11:53 am | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Senator Rubio’s Mistake

An astronomer writing in Slate recently takes Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to task for being unable (or unwilling?) to give the astronomers’ answer to a reporter’s question, posed during a press interview, about the age of the Earth.  After noting that the question has nothing to do with the proper subject of the interview, Rubio […]

December 4, 2012 – 5:31 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas, Politics, Science and Policy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Matthew Effect *

Whatever else the “Occupy” movement accomplishes, it has already popularized the fact–known for a decade to those who pay attention to such things–that the rich in the U.S. are getting richer, while the chasm between them and nearly everyone else is becoming wider, really wider. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics notes that “the most careful […]

January 20, 2012 – 5:51 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas, Science and Engineering in the Law, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Berlin: Then and Now, Part I

On the wall in my writing area is a small black and white photo of two adults dressed in 1940’s era clothes.  The woman wears a dark dress with a large white scalloped collar.  Her head is crowned with a rakish hat.  He wears a double-breasted suit and a fedora.  She smiles proudly.  His serious […]

April 23, 2011 – 3:37 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Berlin, Then and Now: Part II

The tourist buses that unload passengers at the Pergamon Museum and Check Point Charlie rarely stop at the Maerkisches Ufer (quay) of the Spree Canal.  Here reign peace and quiet accompanied by the gentle slip slap of water on the sides of old river barges.  Showing their age, a few barges have been turned by […]

April 21, 2011 – 12:21 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)