Category Archives: society

Little Red Riding Hoods

Last week I went with some friends to an improv show. For one of the segments, the improv group had to act out a fairy tale suggested by a member of the audience—Little Red Riding Hood—in increasingly shorter time spans. … Continue reading 

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America’s Greenest City

Can you guess what America’s “greenest city” is, according to an article in the October 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine? Hint: it’s not San Francisco or Portland or Seattle.

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Reluctantly, I Accept the Nomination

Forget McCain and Obama. A new presidential candidate has burst onto the scene. Watch the video to find out who this mystery candidate is…

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Running in America

Peter Hessler has a fascinating article about American distance runners in The New Yorker this month. Running to Beijing” focuses on Ryan Hall, a marathoner from California, but the part I enjoyed the most was this description of American marathons…

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Obama Fights Back

I was really excited to hear on NPR today that Barack Obama’s campaign has decided to deal with slanderous accusations head on. They’ve put together a new site, Fight the Smears, that calls these accusations what they are: lies.

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Taking Employee Morale to the Next Level

The Chicago-based web-application company 37signals just announced in a blog post that they are conducting a set of “Workplace Experiments” in an attempt to make their company “one of the best places in the world to work, learn, and generally be happy.” So far they’ve implemented three new policies

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Hanging Freud

A little over a week ago the city of Grand Rapids awoke to find a man dangling from a pole projected beyond the corner of a downtown building. Some people called the police, some called the fire department, and some just shook their heads and kept moving right along…

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No Pressure, but You Need More Sleep

A feature article in New York Magazine a little over a month ago asked this troubling question: “Can a Lack of Sleep Set Back Your Child’s Cognitive Abilities?” It’s obviously a rhetorical question, but the recent research is terrifying nonetheless…

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King Corn Documentary

I read in a magazine some time ago that a ridiculous percentage of the food we put in our bodies is corn. Food manufacturers put corn in almost everything, and, of course, most farmers use corn to feed the animals that we eat. And why not? Corn is cheap and ubiquitous, at least here in the United States…

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Leif Erikson Day, 2007

As much as I disagree with almost everything George W. Bush has done during his presidency, I can wholeheartedly support this proclamation from our Commander in Chief…

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