A Good Angle Is Hard to Find
The spread of the selfie produces daily turmoil, from columnist doom-mongering to celebrity scandals. Meanwhile, the world just took a billion more. Defense of a misunderstood phenomenon.
Opinions
A collection of 197 issues
Go Your Own Way
The recent ho-hum reaction to the purchase and ensuing buyback of Frommer’s obscures one key fact: Guidebooks are creators of social change. A defense of their place in the canon.
CrazyBike
New York's new bicycle-share program is a big success. Since May, bikers have taken 646,000 trips. But the initiative has also caused many rational people to explode with rage. Why? Because humans are hardwired to hate cheaters.
Bad Land
America is full of guns—one gun for every citizen—and Americans often use them to shoot one another. It’s not enough anymore to say we love our guns. The question is: Why do we kill?
A Spot for Tea
It’s easy to hate Starbucks until you admit it’s responsible for nearly everything good in today’s coffee culture. Now the behemoth is poised, with a recent acquisition, to introduce America to hundreds of years of tea culture. A tea maker is grateful.
The 2012 Good Gift Games
Oh look, it's the holidays and time to interact with humans again. Thankfully, there are board games to facilitate or replace conversation. Here are 10 of the year's best to get you started.
The Master and Moviemaking
Once again, we convene our film scholars, plus critic Michelle Orange, to discuss a major movie: “The Master,” by Paul Thomas Anderson—a masterpiece of craftsmanship, or merely an exercise of cinema and violence with no story in the center?
Dark Material
There is a brand of humor with an inherent meaning so dark that, even though we may wish we hadn’t laughed, we’re programmed to think it’s funny. An explanation of a joke about a pedophile.
A Coalition of Dunces
Last week, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to give its prestigious award to any novel published in 2011. Something is clearly broken. We roused our commentators from the Tournament of Books, Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner, for their remarks.
Enjoy the Silence
Just because no one uses payphones doesn’t mean the phone booth needs to go the way of the dodo. One man’s plea for preserving society’s greatest unused invention.