About

Cheryl Miller is a 2007 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow and the editor of Doublethink magazine. Her work has appeared in such publications as The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Wall Street Journal, Reason, and The Claremont Review of Books.

She can be contacted at cheryl [at] americasfuture [dot] org.

Read my other blog. The one that's not obnoxious and self-absorbed!


Recent publications

"The Master" in The Claremont Review of Books

"Scary Rise of the 'Sanctimommy'" in The Washington Times

"Why Malamud Faded" in Commentary

"Blogging Infertility" in The New Atlantis

"Outsourcing Childbirth" in The Wall Street Journal

"The Painless Peace of Twilight Sleep" in The New Atlantis

"The Genius of Old New York" in The Claremont Review of Books

"Parenthood At Any Price" in The New Atlantis

"Modern Girls and the Moral Revival They Are Leading" in The Washington Times


ARTICLE ARCHIVE


Links

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Am I Working? Well, I'm At Work.

Paul Graham has clearly seen me at work:
Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Television, for example, has after 50 years of refinement reached the point where it's like visual crack. I realized when I was 13 that TV was addictive, so I stopped watching it. But I read recently that the average American watches 4 hours of TV a day. A quarter of their life.

TV is in decline now, but only because people have found even more addictive ways of wasting time. And what's especially dangerous is that many happen at your computer. This is no accident. An ever larger percentage of office workers sit in front of computers connected to the Internet, and distractions always evolve toward the procrastinators.

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posted by Cheryl  # 9:42 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Two Lists

  • Christopher Buckley lists his five favorite books about Washington, D.C. Last but not least is "any White House memoir": "They all have two themes: 1.) It wasn't my fault! and 2.) It would have been so much worse if I hadn't been there. Now that really tells you something about this town."

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posted by Cheryl  # 8:42 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Harry Potter Is For Kids! Once More, With Feeling.

See, Potter people, this is exactly what I was talking about (via the awesome Margaret Soltan).

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posted by Cheryl  # 5:36 PM 3 Comments

Sentence(s) of the Day

The trick to overcoming procrastination is even simpler. Ready? Here it is: Get off your fat badonk and stop procrastinating. Right now. No, not after the Gilmore Girls rerun ends. Now now.

Will you do this? No. You will not. You will dabble at the crossword for a while. Later, you might get a yogurt. Eventually, you'll start reading pointless crap on the Internet. You see, you're doing it as we speak! Because: You are lazy.

--Seth Stevenson


posted by Cheryl  # 11:16 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Doublethink Party May 21st

If you're in the DC area, AFF will be celebrating the latest issue of Doublethink as well as the new Doublethink Online website on May 21st.

The event takes place at Local 16 (1602 U Street) from 6-8:30 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Also, take a look at Sonny Bunch's article on the Moving Picture Institute from the new issue.
posted by Cheryl  # 10:43 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Commonplace

"You will find few words in Valery that end in i-s-m; and those that he does use he brings in only to mock. Symbolism is an example, for 'Symbolist' was the label attached to the poets clustered around Mallarme when he, Valery, was young. 'It is impossible to think seriously with such words as Classicism, Romanticism, Humanism, Realism, and the other -isms. You can't get drunk or quench your thirst with the labels on bottles.'"
--Joseph Epstein, from Joseph Tartatovsky's review in the Claremont Review of Books
posted by Cheryl  # 1:48 PM 0 Comments

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Asides

James Poulos and Sonny Bunch both have blogs at the newly-launched Doublethink Online. Thoughts on the best cheap beers, the rise of the humanzees, Hillary's foray into the 'No Spin Zone,' and much, much more. All brought to you by the very capable Peter Suderman, now DT's online editor. Check it out!

The spring issue of the Claremont Review of Books is finally out. Joseph Tartakovsky reviews the latest Joseph Epstein collection; Ross Douthat defends Christianity against the new anti-theists; and I quote all the funny bits from the new P.G. Wodehouse anthology. In bookstores now. (Or subscribe and read it in PDF.)

Even tardier than the CRB is the spring issue of Doublethink. But have no fear, it's on the way to the printer now. Some highlights from the new mag:
  • James Kirchick on the return of Jeff Gannon
  • Sonny Bunch travels to Hollywood to check out an adaptation of "Harrison Bergeron"
  • Phoebe Maltz revisits The Israel Lobby controversy
  • Laura Vanderkam on a new form of Catholic education
  • Liam Julian talks to the Eduwonk, Andrew Rotherham
  • And fiction by Eve Tushnet

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posted by Cheryl  # 4:45 PM 0 Comments

Commonplace

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one I was pushed into...It appalls me to realize really how much brute accident accounts for what became of me....Every significant movement in my life resulted from a conjunction between a lurking inclination, which was the talent undeveloped and raw, and opportunities that were not merely not taught to me or shown to me, but weren't sought for and often weren't recognized when they opened up."
--Wallace Stegner, from Philip L. Fradkin's biography, Wallace Stegner and the American West
posted by Cheryl  # 4:27 PM 0 Comments

Heather's Mommy Has Two Facelifts


This definitely belongs in the Department of WTF: a book about plastic surgery for children. (Check out the other illustrations at the link above: Love the SUV and the Beverly Hills-style McMansion. Dr. Salzhauer clearly knows his clients.) If there's any justice in the world, this book will get remaindered.

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posted by Cheryl  # 11:02 AM 0 Comments

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