Last week, The New Yorker ran an article on Google's ambition to put every book ever published onto an online, searcheable database, in other words, to create a complete, infinitely expandable library. The article focused on copyright challenges to this so-called "universal digital library" and on the possibility that a...

Yesterday my older son complained about his anthropology professor's Power Point lectures and the awfulness of being hammered by bullet-points at 10 in the morning. He quoted a vengeful line he put in his most recent paper: "Scientists and apes make perfect companions because of their similar linguistic and artistic...

Shortly after 9-11, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, whose name sounds like it belongs in an Ian Fleming novel, declared an "end to the age of irony." A few weeks later, Time magazine turned the phrase into a battle cry. Then NPR (which is the opposite of Vanity...

A few days after putting up my post "Starbucks and the White Whale" -- a reflection on Starbucks' ambition to become a cultural taste-maker -- I received an email from Daniel Gross, a Starbucks union-organizer in New York, pointing out some facts I had got wrong. I had said...

Last week, Bush joined other notable members of the GOP, such as John McCain, in bashing Kerry over a botched joke that inadvertently linked intellectual laziness and lack of education to getting stuck in Iraq. Kerry had meant to lambaste Bush, but his slip struck fertile soil. Many soldiers do...

Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an article chronicling Starbucks' strategy of positioning itself as a purveyor of high-end culture. The company has already enjoyed great success promoting compilation CDs, original albums, such as Ray Charles' "Genius Loves Company," as well as the movie "Akeelah and the Bee."...

It is a sign of the times that writing this post makes me nervous about my future. Could it come back to haunt me when Bush turns Utah into a Gulag? Of course, I don't really believe this will happen, but an irrational part of me worries that it might,...

According to polls conducted by Democracy Corps, a strategy group run by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, Americans view dependence on foreign oil as the number one national security priority. Given the current news obsession with Foley, this is both welcome and surprising. The current wisdom on both sides...

According to the New York Times, the prosecutor's office in Los Angeles is considering a criminal case against Cardinal Mahoney, who heads the country's largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese, for moving "pedophile priests from parish to parish in the face of accusations."

Rep. Dennis Hastert has spoken at faith-based...

A few years ago, The Onion ran a headline, "Drugs Win Drug War." The ridiculousness of the headline pointed up the meaninglessness of declaring war on a product. It also told a twisted truth. If it were possible to wage war on a product, this particular product would be winning.

This weekend, as my older son and I returned from a movie, we happened to pass The Container Store, which stretched across half a block of prime real-estate in Old Town, Pasadena. How did the owners manage to fill two floors with containers? Do people really shop for containers? We...

On the way home from school, my son asked me, "How much do you think it costs per month to lease a Hummer?" I guessed around $500, but my son said no, around $200, because no one wants a Hummer anymore.

When my son tells me something related to the...

Like most Americans, I learned about the fall of Twin Towers on TV. My wife called me into the bedroom, and I sat before CNN for the next five hours watching endless repetitions of video sequences that had become instant icons: the planes smashing into the towers, the ash...

I don't know about you, but I don't need to know another way for the world to end. When I was ten, I learned that in about five billion years the sun will grow big enough to vaporize our oceans and melt our mountains. A nuclear spat between the USA...

The other day, I took a hike with my 11-year-old son in Eaton Canyon, a desert trail at the end of Pasadena. Maybe it was a flavor of Armageddon in the 100 degree heat, or a hint of Iraq in the earthquake-shattered rubble along the base of the San Gabriel...

During the brief war in Lebanon, Hezbollah hid its rockets in mosques and apartment complexes and interspersed its soldiers among the civilian population. The message: attack Hezbollah and you attack the people of Lebanon.

The Republican party -- also a party of God, sometimes -- made a similar argument...

In the 80s, Don Johnson's perpetual stubble created a trend among the young and powerful and the wannabe powerful -- especially in L.A. It went well with Armani and papaya slices at the Bel Air Hotel. Less well with a leaf-blower strapped to your back. The new movie version of...

On the way home from school, I asked my 11-year-old son what he was listening to. He offered me his iPod ear-plugs, and suddenly Fat Joe A.K.A. Joey Crack was shouting into my head:

My niggas in the club, but you know they not dancin'.
We gangsta, and gangstas...