Susan Klebold speaks

Susan Klebold, mother of Columbine High School killer Dylan Klebold, has finally, after all these years, decided to speak publicly about her son and the events of 4.20.99. She doesn’t give us anything like the understanding we might want – I doubt such a thing is possible – but it’s interesting nonetheless. Read it here.

Read more

And….we’re back

You may have noticed a preponderance of error messages (and corresponding lack of cool ArtsWeek posts) over the past couple of days. Short version: significant technical problems. Massive thanks to Brian Angliss, who in addition to being our star enviro reporter is also our site’s technical director. I don’t know enough to adequately explain the problem, but it seems to

Read more

Why isn’t Rush happy?: Limbaugh inadvertently illustrates democracy in action

America’s democratic ideal doesn’t work perfectly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, and in these cases it feeds our cynicism to the point where we’re tempted to conclude that the very possibility of true freedom is a sham. I know whereof I speak, because there are few people out there more soaked in bile than I am. Still, this whole

Read more

Black swans, butterfly effects, terrorist detectors and marketing research: we don’t know nearly as much as we think we do

Prediction is a big, big business these days, and even those of us who aren’t explicitly in the prediction business probably do all we can to make sense of the future. For example: Does your company do marketing research? (If it’s a business of any size and sophistication, the answer is probably yes.) Do you track the financial pages? Do

Read more

Business and social media: American companies growing up, sort of

Ever since the Internet began gaining popular awareness in the mid-1990s, the topic of how businesses can productively use various new media technologies has been a subject of ongoing interest. Along the way we’ve had a series of innovations to consider: first it was the Net, and the current tool of the moment is Twitter. In between we had, in

Read more

In praise of young girls, in defense of Roman Polanski

Child rapist Roman Polanski has been apprehended in Switzerland. Read all about it. Outrage is palpable – on both sides. Yes, there are two sides. In addition to the “hang the pedophile” side, there’s the – if I might repurpose Wilde here – unspeakable in defense of the unconscionable crowd. Hey, lighten up folks. It’s not like the guy was

Read more

Did President Bush believe that Harry Potter was real? It sure sounds that way.

Not that this should come as any surprise, but we now have confirmation that the Bush administration refused to award Harry Potter author JK Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because the books “encouraged witchcraft.” For a second, let’s set aside any arguments over whether or not Rowling’s work merits such a lofty honor and do something that we simply

Read more
« Older Entries Recent Entries »