“Animals are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time.” – Henry Beston I grew up in a pet-less household, and despite reading Black Beauty, Dr. Doolittle, and Beatrix Potter, I regarded animals as...
It’s official: austerity is the new black. Yes, austerity is what you’ll be wearing for spring, unless you’re in the 1%, and Google Analytics tells me that only one of my readers falls into that category. (Hi there, super-rich person! Are you looking for a good cause?...
It takes a spy to catch a spy. That’s how developer Trevor Eckhart found a “mole” application that’s installed on smartphones, can’t be turned off, and logs the numbers you dial, the URLs you visit, even the content of your text messages. Less logging is done for...
In Middlemarch, Edward Casaubon spends his life searching for the Key to all Mythologies. Another great work of literature, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, concerns the quest for the Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Key? Meaning? Are you kidding me...
The New York Met's current production of Wagner's Siegfried has got me thinking: how would a blog post by the man himself turn out? Maybe something like this? My crappy childhood Hello everyone. My name is Siegfried. No last name. Just Siegfried. I was raised in a...
How do you feel about catalogs? (Or as we used to spell them, “catalogues,” before we got too busy to type the “ue.") I have to confess, I'm ambivalent. Weeks pass in which I don’t feel an urge to buy anything except for necessities: chocolate, toothpaste, printer...