For the last few months, my oldest daughter has been debating current events with her best friend. My wife and I have been witnesses to her burgeoning political and cultural awareness, and it has taken me back to my own awakening.  

Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary’s 2012 updates included crowning “F-bomb,” “sexting” and “man cave” official words. ’Murica! WORLD +1
  

Washington Park is a social experiment so vastly successful Cincinnatians might be unaware of the nuances in its meaning.
We’re still spastically drunk off the park’s new-park smell.  

We, as humans, live in a capitalist society dominated by a perpetual quest for wealth, power and authority, and that authority undoubtedly yields corruption, poor taste and, sometimes, bad people who do bad things.  

WEDNESDAY AUG. 1: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has long been a publicity hound, enacting stupid and ineffective procedures like making inmates wear pink and broil in the Arizona heat while doing their time. Today, in a bit of role reversal, Arpaio was in court.  

An 80-year-old Connecticut lobster escaped narrow death at a seafood restaurant when a sympathetic old human bought the crustacean just to set it free. WORLD +2 
  

This year’s first human case of West Nile Virus in Ohio has been found in an 85-year-old Clermont County man and arrived about a month earlier than expected, thanks to an unseasonably dry, warm summer.  CINCINNATI -2
  

Lately, I’ve felt stuck in this peculiar post-college limbo, one in which the novelty of thrusting myself into this post-21 world of fledglings has granted me steady access to a potion that makes social interactions almost effortless — the never-failing social lubricant that is alcohol.  

WEDNESDAY JULY 25: Delta Air Lines today found out that it sucks to not be good at gambling, after reporting a second-quarter loss of $168 million, or 20 cents per share.
  

On Labor Day, 1994, I got a phone call from twin brother’s friend in Seattle, Wash., where my twin, Jered, lived. This friend told me that Jered was in a Swedish Hospital in serious condition. He also told me Jered had AIDS. This was the first I’d heard about it.  

I had hope that time would allow cooler heads to prevail in the discussion of the Aurora, Colo., tragedy. By now, more than a week has passed, but something feels different this time. Maybe it is more personal because the attack took place at a movie theater and, being a film critic, it struck too near to home for me.  

How is this still even on the table in 2012? Why hasn’t unprotected sex among blacks — the population with the highest HIV numbers — been more closely associated with self-esteem, because you must not love yourself if you let someone push up unprotected.


  

When I rode into Denver in the blazing summer of 1984, I  befriended two native Coloradans in classes on the Denver campus of the University of Colorado, the same campus once attended by the orange-haired gunman accused in the midnight massacre of 12 people in a multiplex cinema in Aurora July 20 during a premiere of The Dark Knight Rises.  

Kermit the Frog today said he was just about sick of Chick-fil-A, and not just because the food is gross. The Jim Henson Co. released a statement saying that it will no longer partner with Chick-fil-A because of the company’s non-inclusive policies.  

We, as humans, really love getting compliments. Next to free stuff, there are few things we appreciate more. Compliments make us feel like we’re special or have done something smart, even if it’s as simple as choosing an item from the fast-fashion store that ends up earning praise from an acquaintance. “I like that shirt,” she says, platonically. “Thanks, I got it at the mall,” we say, not at all sarcastically.