Full disclosure: I have never read one of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s popular graphic novels about Scott Pilgrim and his epic of epic epicness.  But my students insisted last week that I had to see the film adaptation because it was, well, epic.  And really, you should do something fun after you’ve...

Americans are good at buying stuff. Inseparably, Americans are good at selling stuff. Billboards, flyers, cold calls, even dirigibles and airplanes dragging messages over the coastline: if it persuades a consumer, we’ve got it. Poor, victimized consumers. As a citizen of Los Angeles, I’m accustomed...

If 2010 is the year of the pro-life woman, 2016 should be the year of the smart “mommy blogger”—because, if the GOP wants to ensure its own long term success, today’s politically-inclined mommy bloggers will likely become tomorrow’s candidates. Sarah Palin’s popularity is proof that the conservative...

Self-reflection is a tricky thing.  When we feel we’ve moved on from some idea, passion, or stage of our life, we tend to distance ourselves from it, like the college student who denies he was ever a Trekkie once he realizes Star Wars is truly superior.  We harbor contempt (or at least embarrassment)...

The old man had been on the sea for days; the marlin pulled his small boat hour after hour. My mouth was dry, nearly salty. I felt the weight of isolation–the weight of being on a vast ocean that is void of another human form. Ernest Hemmingway tossed me into the skiff and sent it to sea. Fiction...

As a quick primer, The Virtues of Capitalism: The Moral Case for Free Markets by Scott Rae and Austin Hill does an excellent job of hitting the talking points and fleshing out some of the back-story of the world’s most powerful economic system.  However, this book only offers a thin analysis of...

Empathy is one of humanity’s best qualities. And it can also be the most neglected. When insurmountable obstacles confront a community, understanding and compassion from neighbors is often just enough to pull them through. But what if the obstacle is something few can understand? What if it’s trauma...

Twenty is a collection of apparently disparate images that have been thoughtfully selected to complement a great work of art (displayed first in the collection below).  Today’s featured image is the Doni Tondi by Michaelangelo. Every individual image may be contemplated in conjunction with the original...

John Underkoffler believes that the future of User Interface is imbuing computation with space. In other words, the mouse and icon model will soon give way to computers that understand where in the physical world a thing is located and the computer will be able to interact with objects appropriately...

In our Summer Reading Symposium, I recommended three books for summer reading. I love these books too much to leave it at a mere ‘name dropping’. Let me try to convince you, using the opening line, my thoughts and an excerpt from each, that the three books I mentioned are really and truly worth...