When Dave “Davey D” Cook got into hip-hop in the late ’70s, he didn’t see himself as an archivist. A teen growing up in the Bronx, New York City, he was digging through his mom’s records looking for a great funky beat to rap over. At the time, hip-hop was only five years old. Cook was inspired by…

Left, Jacqueline Kennedy in the mid-1960s; right, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Bringing the painting to the U.S. became a personal project of Mrs. Kennedy’s. From Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images (Kennedy)., By Lewandowski/LeMage/Gattelet/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, N.Y.…

1 “Bigger Than Picasso” Paul van Hoeydonck poses with a replica of Fallen Astronaut in front of the Empire State Building in New York in 1971. Courtesy Paul van Hoeydonck/Waddell Gallery* O ne crisp March morning in 1969, artist Paul van Hoeydonck was visiting his Manhattan gallery when he stumbled…

I spent the past couple of days in Berkeley, participating in a number of events at the inaugural Berkeley Ideas Festival. The highlight for me was interviewing Donald MacDonald, the architect of the new (and magnificent) Bay Bridge . But I was also asked to present a little “provocation” on the…

Thamsanqa Jantjie, the man accused of using fake sign language at Nelson Mandela's memorial. Photograph: Foto24/Getty Images O ur daily lives are mostly a mixture of drab routine and unpleasant surprises – however, from time to time, something unexpected happens which makes life worth living.…

Scott: On Friday, we ran a piece on the Worst Films Of 2013 , and because we were looking for the absolute bottom of the barrel, the 15 movies selected were all received with varying degrees of toxicity. But there’s another breed of failure we need to discuss, Mike and Nathan: the high-profile…

W hen historians look back on pop music in 2013, I suspect they will gravitate to one word as a summation for the year’s events. Delusion. Before we get to the reason for this delusion, let’s revel for a moment in glorious self-deception. After all, this was the year of the carefully orchestrated…

Photo: Josh Valcarcel/WIRED OK, audiophiles: real talk. Earphone makers seem to be either too polite or scared to say anything. And the people in the industry who should know better are only actively encouraging a ritual. So let me say it for them: Earphone burn-in is a bunch of hokum. For those of…

noslideshow Todd James is someone who does what he says he’s going to do. Todd James grew up in New York City, and moved here when he was really young from Detroit. When he was in his wee teens, he decided that he wanted to write his name on subway trains. He didn’t write his given name. He favored…

“I saw you blush!” Oprah Winfrey said to Cormac McCarthy and grinned, looking happy for the first time during an interview that appeared to be supremely awkward the moment it began. It was the summer of 2007. “The Road,” McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, had been chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, and…

Earlier this year, a New York Times Magazine profile of the showrunner Shonda Rhimes (“Scandal,” “Grey’s Anatomy”) included a line that made me think she was even more than the talented and savvy TV writer she’s already shown herself to be: “Rhimes observes that people, even the ones who like…

INT. YELLOW CAB — NEW YORK CITY — LATE ON A THURSDAY NIGHT BARON I still can’t believe I’m hiccupping. BARON [ Comical, strangled noise .] BARON I’m just giving up. I trust you — CARRUTH [ Hysterical drunken laughter .] BARON — slash I’ll probably put this in the piece anyway. CARRUTH That’s not…

4 Dec Share Share Today's surprise in GOG.com's Holiday Celebrations is the last part of the series of articles by David Craddock "From Monochrome to Monarchy: King's Quest History". This time you'll get some insight about the development of the last two parts in the famous series by Roberta…

13 Sep Share Share With the release of the final two installments from the famous King's Quest series, we're posting the next part of "From Monochrome to Monarchy: King's Quest History" retrospective by David Craddock. Since venturing forth into an unknown land to rescue his bride-to-be Valanice in…

8 Jul Share Share We continue the retrospective by David Craddock about Roberta Williams' King's Quest saga in the third part of "From Monochrome to Monarchy" series of articles. Having relocated the setting of King's Quest II from Daventry to another magical realm, Roberta Williams' colleagues at…

27 May Share Share In the first part of the "From Monochrome to Monarchy: King's Quest History" series of articles by David Craddock, we've presented the beginnings of On-Line Systems. With a slight delay, it's time for the second part - "Quest for a Crown" . After the enthusiastic reception of both…

1 Mar Share Share Today's release of "The Days Before Daventry" starts the series of "From Monochrome to Monarchy: The History of King's Quest" articles by David Craddock. In 1972, the same year in which Atari's release of Pong laid the foundation for what would one day become a multi-billion-dollar…

Jump to Four-year-old Riley Maida stands in a toy aisle of a department store in Newburgh, N.Y. The backdrop is pink. The shelves behind her are stacked with plastic babies in pink onesies. To her left are hair-and-makeup dolls with exaggerated heads attached to truncated shoulders. The shelf above…

Now more than ever, pop culture is about the small stuff — an obscure TV show, a few notes in a pop song, a tweet. To celebrate a year of micro moments, every day a new Grantland writer will highlight one specific thing — a Big Little Thing — that we won’t soon forget. I had spent the day with my…

"Mutability is no longer about the physical body's sad corruption, nor about the freshness of the New Thing. Enter Tao, exit Reason. To live in this flux, Zen demands mu, "unasking the question"—for the question invariably asks to preserve the unpreservable, in language of the reified present. What…

On Tuesday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced a 12-year, $5.2-billion deal awarding Rogers Communications exclusive rights to all NHL games on all platforms -- cable, internet and mobile. In an instant, the Canadian sports media landscape shifted. TSN, the Canadian sports broadcasting leader…

Publishers should stop flailing around with book trailers and look to other Hollywood tropes for inspiration. TL;DR: Book trailers are a waste of money, but shortform promotional video from book publishers still has potential; it can and should be used to set the tone for a work instead of trying to…

iPHone prototype/ jimabeles FLICKR CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Excerpt from ‘Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products’ This post has moved to a new location on the Cult of Mac blog.

This past weekend, Snoop Dogg‘s debut album Doggystyle turned 20. Back in 1993, the lanky 21-year-old from Long Beach, Calif. was riding high on his breakout performances from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic , but he’d been implicated in the murder of Philip Woldemariam and had a murder trial looming. The…

Jesse Dittmar The outdoor crowd of some 6,000 fans in Boise that night in April probably remember a few distinct things about the show they’d come to see. One: It was great. Of course it was. This was Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, after all — the raucous but tight-as-a-drum soul powerhouse fronted…

Steve McQueen. Photo: Gene Pittman “I don’t think slavery has been taboo at all,” Steve McQueen told me, having just noted that his film 12 Years a Slave is one of less than two dozen to address this painful part of US history. “[Racism has] actually been very visible and obvious in a way–the…

Dowling tries to cross the road with Duddly. Photograph: Graham Turner T he idea of walking a dangerous dog did not immediately appeal to me as an assignment. I walk a non-dangerous dog every day, and even that is sort of a drag. To exchange it for a powerful, snarling beast would just add an…

thanksgiving scramble for pennies / library of congress The webcomics, gaming event, and reality web TV company wants you as its underpaid, overworked, cherished employee in its offensive office. Penny Arcade is no stranger to controversy, but a job posting for an IT worker seems to have struck a…

After 85 years, antibiotics are growing impotent. So what will medicine, agriculture and everyday life look like if we lose these drugs entirely? A few years ago, I started looking online to fill in chapters of my family history that no one had ever spoken of. I registered on Ancestry.com, plugged…

The Google car knows every turn. It never gets drowsy or distracted, or wonders who has the right-of-way. Illustration by Harry Campbell Human beings make terrible drivers. They talk on the phone and run red lights, signal to the left and turn to the right. They drink too much beer and plow into…

I felt like Will Smith in "Enemy of the State." I was being hunted, harassed and stalked by criminals with technological expertise. I had been thrust into an unexpected war. I felt exposed, vulnerable and alone on the front line. I had awoken a hideous network of villains and saboteurs, who were in…

Jump to "I think 'overwhelmed' is the right word," says Rami Ismail, the business half of Dutch design duo Vlambeer. The interview is over. The story, told in pieces at least a hundred times in bars, at hamburger joints, on stages and in private circles of up-and-coming game developers, has now been…

There's no way to structure this coherently. They are random observations that might help explain the mental processes. But often, I think that we look at the academic problems of poverty and have no idea of the why. We know the what and the how, and we can see systemic problems, but it's rare to…

Is agave nectar good? Is agave nectar bad? Believe it or not, I thought I’d written a definitive post on this topic. As it turns out, I hadn’t. Earlier this week a reader emailed me, seeking an answer to the classic question: Agave nectar — good or bad? She pointed out that she’d done a search for…