April 2012 - Mark Kaplowitz

26 April 2012

Remember Mad Cow Disease?

I am going on holiday, so luckily for all of you there won’t be any new columns here next week. The horror resumes May 10. I hear that mad cow disease is back for the first time since 2006. Ah, 2006. The year the iPhone was released, putting millions of other cell phones out of work. Cell phones that have...

Current Events/Eating and Drinking Comments: 7

23 April 2012

Remember William Shakespeare?

They didn’t have birth certificates in Elizabethan England, so no one knows for sure the date of William Shakespeare’s birthday, something that I imagine created a lot of problems whenever Shakespeare tried to pick up a prescription at CVS. But we do know that Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. So don’t forget to wish him a Happy Deathday on...

Uncategorised Comments: 5

19 April 2012

Remember When You Didn’t Have to Worry About Online Tracking?

I recently read an article about how companies track Internet searches to aid in marketing of products and rejection of credit applications. It is certainly easy to see what banks will do with credit applicants who search for “do I have to pay my mortgage,” or what life insurers will do with policy applicants who search for “skyscrapers that let...

Current Events/Technology Comments: 2

16 April 2012

Remember When You Could See Around Most Vehicles?

We’d come to the end of another Saturday lunch at P.F. Chang’s, and I was chewing gum so that if I got pulled over at a police checkpoint my breath wouldn’t smell like gluten-free ginger chicken with broccoli. I turned the ignition, adjusted the rearview mirror, released the emergency brake, popped in my “Drive Time Gaelic” compact disc, and put...

Cars/Safety Comments: 2

12 April 2012

Remember Trapper Keepers?

Everyone had one and I wanted one too. It was called a Trapper Keeper. A plastic binder with sliding plastic rings and a flap that folded over the front, so that all the notes were “trapped” inside this latest assault on parents’ school budgets. I remember when I sat my parents down and told them I wanted a Trapper Keeper. ...

School Comments: 9

9 April 2012

Remember When Sugar Wasn’t the New Cocaine?

Last week Sixty Minutes aired a segment titled “Is Sugar Toxic?” that reported scientific evidence that the added sugar in various foods causes a variety of ailments such as heart disease, cancer, and looking like a whale. One neuroscientist, Eric Stice, stated that his studies show that the effects of sugar on the brain are similar to the effects of...

Current Events/Eating and Drinking/Health and Fitness Comments: 12

5 April 2012

Remember When We Were Slaves in Egypt?

When I was a kid we didn’t have television or hand-held devices. We had to make bricks from bitumen and pitch. My friends and I liked to say “bitumen” over and over until our mothers yelled at us for being obscene. She said we didn’t even know what it was. But we found out soon enough. I remember what it...

Holidays Comments: 17

2 April 2012

Remember When the Police Couldn’t Track You With Your Cellphone?

Note: A brief glossary follows this post, Mom and Dad. MK I just read an article about how a number of local police officials are tracking cellphones, often without warrants or Hollywood scripts. I wonder what the police would think if they tracked my cellphone. “Okay, he’s in the embroidered washcloth section of Target. Let’s move!” Would they have to...

Technology Comments: 6

Monthly Archive: April, 2012