DeParle's judicious, sensitive eye
picks apart the pathologies of life in the ghetto and the minute failings of programs that have undermined the government's promise of alleviating the problems of poverty, while remaining essentially upbeat about the prospect of improving the ghettos, one of America's next great moral challenges.
In columns for The Skeptic, which he publishes, and Scientific American, he regularly
picks apart ideas that are dubious but nevertheless widely held.
Essentially a meditation on contingency and loss, 16 minutes is also an acutely self-aware and self-referential work in which Strom
picks apart her own role and persona as an artist.