Archive: Think piece

Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne observes that the candidates for mayor have been short on future vision for the city. That's too bad, he writes in a front-page critic's notebook, since there are "some major holes in the civic fabric." It all starts with the mess that is LAX.

There are at least two schools of thought on the long-standing practice of holding Los Angeles city elections in odd-numbered years. The former city controller argues that bundling with the national elections will raise voter participation. But maybe that's not the problem.

USC law professor Elyn R. Saks, author of the memoir, “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness,” writes in Sunday's New York Times from her perspective that "the seeds of creative thinking may sometimes be found in mental illness." Her experience as a sufferer of schizophrenia is that while she needs medication and professional care, she also needs to work. "My mind, I have come to say, is both my worst enemy and my best friend."

In a piece being well received at the Los Angeles Review of Books, television critic Phillip Maciak calls Aaron Sorkin "one of the only commercially bankable and socially conscious screenwriters now working; his writing style is fast, fluid, and instantly recognizable..." And yet.

Before Wilson gave voice to the case against broken windows, Gitlin took his course and "learned a lot about cities, classes, political machines, and reformers....[but] as Wilson’s commitment to conservative orthodoxy grew, his critical edge was blunted."