Gayle Rodda Kurtz

You think you can multitask? Think again!

February 5, 2015 by William Eaton

In 2009 I became aware of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the effectiveness of multitasking by Professor Clifford Nass, Department of Communication at Stanford. Nass was one of the first academics to study and warn of the dangers of multitasking and decline of social interaction. He and his colleagues at Stanford devised three tests to study the effects of multitasking—an increasingly prevalent activity of the young. They compared chronically […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz • Tags: science, technology

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Listening to Rebecca Solnit

October 30, 2014 by William Eaton

Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me is now in its third printing. To celebrate its success, the publisher (TomDispatch.com) recently reprinted the 2008 essay from the book: The Archipelago of Arrogance. In the essay Solnit, the author of many books, describes being asked by an imposing, wealthy man at a party what her books were about. She mentioned one on Eadweard Muybridge. The man cut her off to tell her about a very important book that had just been […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR

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Wayne Thiebaud at 94

October 23, 2014 by William Eaton

There are times when old age produces not eternal youth but a sovereign freedom, a pure necessity in which one enjoys a moment of grace between life and death, and in which all the parts of the machine come together to send into the future a feature that cuts across all ages: Titian, Turner, Monet. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari There is reason to celebrate artist Wayne Thiebaud, now in his 94th year and in the 7th decade of his painting […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR • Tags: art

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Body of War, part two

October 16, 2014 by William Eaton

Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro produced a documentary film, Body of War, released in 2007, about the life of paralyzed US Army Iraqi- War veteran Tomas Young. The film cuts back and forth between painful scenes of the recovery process for Young and the debate and vote in the Senate, in October 2002, over the Iraq War Resolution that authorized military action against Iraq as requested by President Bush. The film received critical acclaim and won several awards at film […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR • Tags: Body of War, Chris Hedges, film, Phil Donahue, politics, Tomas Young

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Bicycle Art Everywhere at Brooklyn Museum

October 9, 2014 by William Eaton

This post is a variation on Zeteo is Reading. Here, Zeteo is Looking. On the first Saturday of each month, the Brooklyn Museum is free from 5 to 11pm. Viva Brooklyn! was the theme for October’s First Saturday with thirteen free events throughout the museum from panel discussions, gallery talks, to hands-on art making for all ages. On the program were three different Latino music groups that alternated in the 1st floor Pavilion and three bicycle art projects outside the […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR

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Robert M. Morgenthau on Immigration Injustice

September 13, 2014 by William Eaton

Without question, I considered Robert M. Morgenthau (District Attorney for New York, borough of Manhattan, from 1975 to 2009) the great political figure of New York City at the end of the twentieth century for his fearless battle against white-collar crime. He was a hero above the mundane vicissitudes of ordinary life. I was surprised then to find out that his wife, Lucinda Franks, had written the intimate story of their unusual marriage, Timeless: Love, Morgenthau, and Me. When he […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR • Tags: immigrants

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Isolation vs. Solitude

August 13, 2014 by William Eaton

With Drew Whitcup on vacation, Zeteo Associate Gayle Rodda Kurtz is reading Montaigne— When did the celebrated notion of our individualism slip into a form of isolation? We are familiar with the sight of those around us in public spaces hunched over their electronic devices and addicted to mindless electronic games and time-wasting media activities. Thinking that we were in our own private worlds, we now know that we are caught up in complex systems of surveillance technologies. This toxic […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR

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Twenty-first century octopi & geriatric migrant workers

August 9, 2014 by William Eaton

With Cat Gironda on vacation, Zeteo Associate Gayle Rodda Kurtz is reading — Two essays in the August 2014 issue of Harper’s Magazine that cover developments, which are not prominently reported in the mainstream media, of the changed economic and social landscape. Independent writer Rebecca Solnit’s op-ed Easy Chair column, titled The Octopus and Its Grandchildren, compares those who accumulated great wealth in the nineteenth century with technology’s billionaires of today. Southern Pacific Railroad and Standard Oil were depicted in cartoons […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiR • Tags: Google, lobbying, migrant labor, retirement, Twitter