Kara Gordon and an aachen head. Image Courtesy GM Every car has a soundscape—even noise is designed. During the car sales pitch, there is a moment when you first get behind the wheel. You hit the ignition, the engine turns over, and the car comes to life. You are bathed in the sound of countless…

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. The movie “Hannah Arendt,” which opened in New York in May, has unleashed emotional commentary that mirrors the fierce debate Arendt herself ignited over half a century ago, when she covered the…

Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee, I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis…

PPL Park. (PHOTO: KKIMPHOTOGRAPHY /FLICKR) If it were its own country, Chester, Pennsylvania’s per capita income would rank between Turkey and Dominica. On average, its residents are poorer than those of Uruguay, Lebanon, and Antigua and Barbuda. The city has been part of a program for economically…

As the world’s population hurtles toward an estimated 9 billion by 2050, global food shortages are becoming a very real problem. In no sector is this more apparent than the meat industry. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that around 70 percent of all agricultural land on Earth…

There were warning signs. Red flags. Flares in the big empty sky. The school was located in a series of strip malls along a highway in a shitty part of town, but close enough to a nice part to appear, on paper, like a good place to go. The parking lot contained a Wendy’s, an abandoned seafood…

What I'm Not Sure About Given the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it's easy to identify some things as having gone "right" and other things as having gone "wrong." However, some of the most interesting things to consider are the ones that aren't so easily pinned down. Here are some questions that are…

The collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts has become a bargaining chip in the city’s bankruptcy battle. Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times As Detroit files for bankruptcy — the largest American city ever to do so — the impressive collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts has become a…

Photo: Noah Kalina/Noah Kalina I have 700 friends on Facebook, 36 of whom I consider exes. Not all are ex-boyfriends—in the eleven years that “boyfriend” has been a name for men in my life, I have referred to nine as “boyfriends.” The rest are men I dated casually, guys I dated disastrously,…

“Mr. Duggan?” “Yes?” “What is the purpose of your visit to France?” “Tourism!” I n the same way that the detective movie is a fantasy about city life, the spy movie is a fantasy about tourism. No one is more beautifully adapted to the urban environment than the detective — he knows its secrets,…

Gallery Photo: Comic-Con's weapon inspectors Every year, a handful of people see every sword, spear, gun, and hammer that makes it to the floor of Comic-Con – and a few that don't. Halfway down the convention center, at a small booth labeled "costume weapons check," a steady trickle of characters…

For most of its four-decade existence, Troma Entertainment has thrived less as a low-rent film-production and distribution company than as an irresistible idea: the craziest, wildest, most fearlessly transgressive and tacky Z-movie studio imaginable. The peculiar genius of Troma co-founder and…

A conspiracy of voices Conspiracy theorists will probably be delighted to learn that a smallish, 100 person company out of Louisville controls the announcement systems in just about every important public space in the United States. They do it for 110 airports including JFK, LAX, and Chicago O’Hare,…

So far, the Monday-morning quarterbacking over the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin has largely been about America’s terrible inability to see past race, even in the age of Obama — with side discussions about Florida’s gun laws and what should and shouldn’t constitute…

Photo: David Crotty/Patrick McMullan The following essay is an adaptation of a Facebook post by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Questlove is the drummer for the Roots and the bandleader on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon . I’m…

Jeff Minton for The New York Times When Jack Handey sold his first jokes to Steve Allen in 1977, Allen sent him a letter offering him $100 and telling him his name sounded like a product, not a person. “Say homemakers, take a look at the new Jack Handey,” Allen wrote. “Just the thing for slicing,…

T hey were passing around a photo of a faceless man. Some of them, cameramen and sound guys, were laughing. Two days before, an old vagrant had been mangled by a drug-crazed lunatic on the MacArthur Causeway in Miami. A policeman had shot at the naked attacker—five times—until the guy stopped…

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago. I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity. I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years…

Clarke Peters and Dominic West in The Wire Courtesy of Paul Schirald/HBO, Inc. This article is adapted from Brett Martin’s Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos to Mad Men to Breaking Bad. By the time the fourth season of The Wire rolled around, it had already…

Dante Ross – The Unkut Interview Part 3: The SD-50’s Friday May 01st 2009, Filed under: Features , In The Trenches , Interviews , Not Your Average , Steady Bootleggin' , Video Clips Written by: The other aspect of Dante Ross’ career that’s noteworthy to rap fiends are the classic tracks he produced…

Dante Ross – The Unkut Interview Part 2: The Elektra Era Thursday April 30th 2009, Filed under: Features , In The Trenches , Interviews , Not Your Average , Steady Bootleggin' Written by: Following on from Part One , we move onto Dante’s time at Elektra Records, where assembled an all-star cast of…

Dante Ross – The Unkut Interview Part 1: The Tommy Boy Era Wednesday April 29th 2009, Filed under: Features , In The Trenches , Interviews , Not Your Average , Steady Bootleggin' Written by: There was a time when being an A&R in rap music actually meant something more than the guy who’s trying to…

Every Sunday we take a stroll through our archives in order to reintroduce to a piece from our past. Today, in the wake of Nintendo's mini-revival of Starfox with Shigeru Miyamoto's Wii U experiment, we bring you Damien McFerran's making of the SNES original. The article was originally published in…

In the wee hours of the morning of January 27, 2013, a Wikipedia editor named "Qworty" made a series of 14 separate edits to the Wikipedia page for the late writer Barry Hannah , a well-regarded Southern author with a taste for the Gothic and absurd. Qworty cut paragraphs that included quotes from…

Reuters Uma Swaminathan tuned the television set in the living room of her ranch style home in the suburbs of East Brunswick, N.J. to CNBC. It was 9:00 a.m. on May 18, 2012, a day the retired schoolteacher thought might make her rich. She logged onto her Vanguard brokerage account on her computer…

Five Companies Hoping to Get You Into Space Soon SpaceShipTwo Virgin Galactic Founder: Sir Richard Branson Start date: 2013 Ticket price: $200,000 The two-hour flight begins with being taxied by the world’s largest composite aircraft up to 50,000 feet. Then, the SS2 rockets higher, reaching…

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W hat can we learn from incredibly obscure things? I kept wondering this as I studied the pages of Enjoy the Experience: Homemade Records 1958-1992 , a beautiful new coffee-table book devoted to the radiantly strange world of privately pressed vanity records. From the 1960s through the 1980s, anyone…

How He Got Over: An Oral History of Darondo Fandom 07/01/2013, 8:12 AM Filed under: Guest Spots , Interviews | Tags: Darondo Painting by Frances Marin There’s a certain espirit de corps in the following posts, all of which stem from our basic love for Darondo and his music. He was also from the Bay…

The city of San José, Costa Rica, is a sprawling gray mess that doubles as the sex-tourism capital of Latin America. Thanks to legalized prostitution, parts of downtown look like Disneyland for horny, middle-aged Australians. The urban center is a mix of shopping malls, semi-rises, and fast-food…

Daniele Lo Presti: the paparazzo was killed by a professional hitman. Photograph: Massimo Percossi I t's now more than two months since Daniele Lo Presti , a famous Italian paparazzo, was murdered under Testaccio bridge in Rome. Lo Presti had been due to meet friends for a run on 27 February at…

ninety-nine glimpses The Everlasting Appeal of Princess Margaret A new book explains why the Queen’s younger sister has a story worth telling. by Hilary Weaver ninety-nine glimpses The Everlasting Appeal of Princess Margaret A new book explains why the Queen’s younger sister has a story worth…