File this under intriguing-ideas-I-don’t-really-agree-with: And that is the real human calculus here: the companies are being forced to pick sides between Mr. Sheen and Mr. Lorre. In a town that lives for hits and can’t seem to find them, Mr. Lorre has helped create not only “Two and a Half Men,” but “Grace Under Fire,” “Cybill,” [...]
I find it frustrating when a writer is trying to make a point I largely agree with in the most despicable way possible: No sane person, witnessing that scene at the airport, seriously feared that this woman was planning to blow herself up on a plane. The fact that she was accompanied by children gave us the [...]
As a non-practicing atheist, I’m not sure I have anything that dramatic to say about The Apostate. There are a couple of big picture perspective problems that are typical of most New Yorker features but apply especially well not just to the point of view but the nature the content of this particular profile. Basically, [...]
The following interesting resignation/response exchange (found via Daniel Lemire’s excellent blog) is quite interesting, if only because it is a public peek into a number of gray box style academic employment issues. I have to say that as a graduate student, many of my naive notions of academic employment have been turned upside down. What struck [...]
From the always interesting The Awl: Because here’s the thing that we all know: just because you employ a ton of women (40%, they say!) on your staff doesn’t negate the possibility that the content of your show, and its public image—as in, who actually writes and says the words, who, in a word, are [...]
Today’s “quote of the day” is from an article someone on Twitter described as a poorly written attack on Gawker Media. I thought the piece made an important point about incentives in for-profit blogging. As of this writing, Carmon’s post has generated almost 1,000 comments and nearly 90,000 page views. It’s a prime example of [...]
Ann Arbor has a nice Summer Festival every year, which includes a free concert series called Top of the Park. I’m often surprised by the quality of the acts that get booked, considering how long the free concert series lasts. I’ve decided to post some samples from this year’s lineup. I guess you get your [...]
Even if you don’t find Starship Troopers as prescient as I do, the years have been kind to it, if only because it’s now removed from the context of whatever expectations people might have had for it at the time. It seems absurd now to write it off as some silly piece of escapism, as [...]
I have a small collection of phobias that I’ve learned to live with over the years, even appreciate in an odd way as situations that confer a kind of instant adrenaline. For example, I’m bothered by heights, not airplane style heights, but railing style heights that look out over built environments of concrete and imagined [...]