‘”Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”‘ – A Christmas Carol,…

R egression’s a bitch. Two months ago the Cleveland Indians, losers of 93 games last year, were 30-15 and seven games up on their AL Central rivals. Seven weeks into the season, even the most hardened skeptics had to concede that the Indians were in good shape to make the playoffs. In a division in…

NASA’S SUCCESSFUL QUANTIFYING OF COMEDY TIMING (By Penn Jillette and Teller) Excerpt from “How To Play In Traffic”, Penn Jillette and Teller, 1997 (out of print). This is long, but for my money, it’s the best thing about the space shuttle ever written. Buddy Hackett said, “Ask me what’s the secret…

OUTSIDE SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- To most, the word “Zodiac” conjures up images of astrological symbols and the positions of stars. But Corey Starliper, a Tewksbury native and hobby code-cracker, thinks of a serial killer of the same name. Starliper also thinks that he has solved a cipher devised by…

You know a celebrity is coming to the Berklee Performance Center when a campus announcement informs students they will NOT be allowed to queue up at the BPC doors until 2 hours before an 11 o’clock event (you also know it’s a celebrity when students would choose to wake up before 9, but I digress).…

Even if a videogame features extreme fantasy elements that have no connection to reality, usually these elements at the very least fit into the context of the game’s story. Take a game like Final Fantasy , for instance. On several different occasions your party will fight a cactus that shoots…

Books Mission: Impossible In this exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming book, The Impossible: Rodney Mullen, Ryan Sheckler, and the Fantastic History of Skateboarding , GQ researcher Cole Louison chronicles the fascinating and dangerous world of competitive skating GQ researcher Cole Louison gave…

i, like many others , have been contemplating the demise of manned spaceflight in the United States since Friday morning's final launch of Atlantis. this is not the sort of thing that typically tugs at me…i tweeted as much just prior to the launch. i have very vague early memories of watching…

The Year of Wonders By posted at 6:00 am on July 7, 2011 1. “We’re closing in on a deal,” my agent told me on the phone. “I’m just turning him upside-down now and shaking him for loose change.” It was midday on a Monday in early August of the year 2000. The Nasdaq, rested from its…

CLASSICS Eric Berley, left, makes a cherry phosphate soda. At right, a sundae at Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain. Left, Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times; right, Phil Kline for The New York Times WHO killed the soda fountain? Was it Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the 1933 repeal of…

E very NBA team starts a home game the same way: by announcing the visiting team’s starting lineup, then turning out the lights and cranking a song that’s either hip-hop happy or gratuitously goose-bumpish (like Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”). Within seconds, a JumboTron highlight-video…

Victoria Johnson Cartographer / Geogrump. DC resident, Buffalo loyalist. Opinions are mine etc etc etc. Also: @goalhorns ! The Awl Be less stupid.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. When I first got my iPhone, I spent a lot of time playing iPhone/iPad games to do some research as I…

Since turning 30, in January, Justin Timberlake has been kicking back, trying to make sense of his wild two-decade ride from the Mickey Mouse Club to music and movie stardom. A very different person now, Timberlake lets Vanessa Grigoriadis in on why he stripped for the camera in Friends with…

CBS MoneyWatch published what they called the “20 Craziest Job Interview Questions.” The questions, they claimed, were real job interview questions that “such companies as Google, Capital One, and Goldman Sachs asked internship candidates.” Our writer Giles Turnbull could do with a proper job, so we…

One August morning nearly two decades ago, my mother woke me and put me in a cab. She handed me a jacket. “ Baka malamig doon ” were among the few words she said. (“It might be cold there.”) When I arrived at the Philippines’ Ninoy Aquino International Airport with her, my aunt and a family friend,…

SO, what’ll it be tonight? How about a Smoke Signal made with bacon-infused rye, chipotle syrup, cold-brewed coffee ice and porter? Or the Grillo Canción, an exotic and possibly deranged member of the Collins family that fuses pisco, cumin syrup, citrus and celery bitters? Or maybe a Knot Twist…

L awrence Kasdan’s Silverado gets my vote for most underrated modern Western. It’s got everything an oater should have: gunfights, robberies, murders, wisecracks for days, and real, honest-to-goodness heart. There are funny cowboys facing off against tough but evil ranchers, duels to the death for…

Steve Rhodes David Foster Wallace giving a reading at All Saints Church, San Francisco, 2006 The following conversation is drawn from an interview I did with David Foster Wallace in September 2006 as part of a series of articles and radio pieces about important foreign writers, artists, and movie…

I have very few rules in life, but this is one of them: Any time a team chokes away the NBA Finals 11 months after throwing a “Welcome Party” for itself, and it happens on the same night that Matt Stone and Trey Parker win 35 Tony Awards, I have to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning and write a…

The audience at a show featuring Disney characters. Joachim Ladefoged/VII, for The New York Times Something you learn rearing kids in this young millennium is that the word “Disney” works as a verb. As in, “Do you Disney?” Or, “Are we Disneying this year?” Technically a person could use the terms in…

F act: The Decision was the best thing that happened to the NBA in 15 years. Fact: The year leading up to The Decision spiked TV ratings, boosted Internet traffic, provoked an onslaught of media opinion and generated more mainstream interest than any NBA storyline since Kobe and Shaq had a year-long…

MIAMI -- There once was a man who enjoyed being the center of attention. He made a guest appearance on "Entourage." He nailed his two lines. The photo shoot he did for Maxim was, well, an attention grabber. With his 6-foot-11 frame sprawled out on expensive furniture in a posh beachfront home, he…

The World Science Festival this past week was another triumph of cultural cross-pollination, but I’m afraid there was one missed opportunity to bring art and science together. If only someone had thought to put Daniel Boulud and Nathan Myhrvold on the same stage, we could have considered the…