What’s the problem with Vancouver that no one’s talking about? The spectacle of the Winter Games isn’t just ruining sports — it’s killing our chance to be happy. Read it here.
In Defence of Mexican Gangster Polka
The Narcocorrido. Read it here.
The Age of Precariousness
The 21st Century and its inhabitants have been deformed by catastrophe. Read it here.
How Much Do We Owe Simon Cowell?
Everything. Because we are all judges now. And even if he’s leaving the most popular TV show in the history of pretty much ever, he brought us together more than Obama could. Read it here.
Aren't We Enjoying All This Celebrity Death a Little Too Much?
Brittany Murphy’s is just the latest public funeral from a year during which we preferred to spend time forgetting famous lives than remembering them. The next thing to die in our culture’s selfish hands may be even scarier. Read it here.
Darwin vs. Genesis
On the 150th birthday of The Origin of Species, putting two great works to the readability test. Read it here.
Why Puppets Are All the Rage
Read it here.
The Book That Contains All Books
The globally available Kindle could mark as big a shift for reading as the printing press and the codex. Read it here.
What's Really Going on With All These Vampires?
From Twilight to True Blood and now The Vampire Diaries, is it vampires that so many American women love … or just gay men? Read it here.
Why are you working so hard?
Americans are hooked on a habit we can’t stand, but the recession offers a chance to find out how to kick it before our cultural obliviousness gets the best of us. Read it here.
"It's simply that we're no longer new"
The NDP's national director is a big fan of dropping the first word of the party's name, but has he considered the unfortunate acronyms that would create? Read it here.
Where's Dave Chappelle When You Need Him?
With race relations back on the front burner and all eyes on a bunch of guys drinking beer in the White House, Stephen Marche wonders where all the angry black entertainers have gone. Read it here.
"Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three"
Fifty years ago this week, the ban on Lady Chatterley's Lover was lifted, thus changing a culture that treated sex as a preposterous allegory to one overrun with naked videos of sportscasters. Read it here.
Messy life, clichéed death for prince of hispters
Demise of Dash Snow, notorious in New York's downtown art scene, marks the end of an era. Read it here.
"We're not robots"
Conservatives once appreciated the complexities of human life, but the Republican line at this week's Supreme Court nomination hearings in the U.S. Senate would make Edmund Burke sigh. Read it here.
The Diminishing Returns of Getting Even
From Brad Pitt to John Rambo to the Bush administration’s torture lawyers, America is growing more sophisticated at revenge with each eye-for-an-eye comedy. Read it here.
"You can't negotiate with yourself"
David Miller’s koan sums up the new reality of Toronto’s garbage strike: When we become our own garbage collectors, we soon find there are truths about our waste we’d rather not learn. Read it here.
"Tell her what u think of snarky critics"
Novelist Alice Hoffman’s 27 angry tweets about a bad review – including the posting of the reviewer’s phone number – portends an exciting new era of bloodshed in book reviewing. Read it here.
“Appalled and Outraged”
President Barack Obama’s reaction to Iran’s Green Revolution was an understatement, but what can he – or any of us – say? The good guys are silent while the ayatollahs refuse to whisper. Read it here.
Why We Can't Let the Brunos and Madoffs of the World Play Us Anymore
From Joaquin Phoenix and Sacha Baron Cohen to Jim Cramer and AIG, we need to stop blaming the golden-age pranksters and start getting responsible for our recession-era actions. Read it here.