This is the official-and I stress that, official-photo released by NASA for an upcoming expedition to the International Space Station. The awesomeness is so extraordinary it can’t be contained by one measly class M planet. And if you know what’s wrong with that last sentence, you earn your geek badge of the day.
Movies
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
After Ferguson, ‘Dear White People’ Arrives Right On Time
Then again, any time would have been right. Systemic white privilege and the language of racism is an American tradition as old as the republic.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
How Did Racist Right-Wing Fantasy Presented as Truth Come to Top the New York Times Bestseller List?
Calling African Americans “culturally backward” and arguing against the public accommodations section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Dinesh D’Souza soars to the top of the chart.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
A Question of Character: Craig Shirley’s Scurrilous Attack on Liberal Historian Rick Perlstein
An assault on the character of a progressive intellectual invites an assessment of the attacker’s character—not to mention his client list.
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Robin Williams and the Weight of Being Famous
It’s a wonder more celebrities aren’t driven to despair by it.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Here’s Why One Day You Will Probably Fall In Love With a Robot
It’s not that you won’t realize you’ve fallen head over heels for a piece of software; it’s that you won’t care.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
A Hard Days Night and Beatlemania: The West’s Last Outbreak of Optimism Disease
How much the Beatles helped create the ’60s and how much the ’60s helped create the Beatles is one of the great chicken-and-egg questions.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
New Film About Liberal Gadfly Gore Vidal Totally Misses the Point
Gore Vidal rejoiced in making his readers’ lives more complicated by baring the power drives underneath our political pieties. The United States of Amnesia does him, and its audience, no justice.
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Is ‘The Fault In Our Stars’ Author John Green His Generation’s Pop Philosopher?
The author and phenom, with a bajillion Internet viewers, has built an avid Internet following with pep talks on how to be good. What does it mean to live like one of Green’s “Nerdfighters”?
Posted inBooks, Arts and Culture
Hipster Vampires in the Ruins of Motor City
While the latest offering from director Jim Jarmusch may be about blood-sucking bohemians, it’s really a lament for the vanishing culture of the Beat Generation and mid-century rock and roll.
