We love games of chance. Whether it's throwing dice, playing a card game or having our fortune told by a tarot card reader, we enjoy the luck of the draw. These games can be serious as well as entertaining. One of the best known is the Mexican Lotería, a deck...

I first learned that Steve Jobs had died on my iPhone. A friend texted me soon after the news broke, "I can't believe that Steve Jobs died!" I was in New York for a digital summit, which was appropriate. I actually read the text while having dinner with some friends....

In 2009, artist Karen Green made "The Forgiveness Machine." It was a strange seven-foot-long plastic apparatus that allowed people to write down whatever they wanted to forgive or be forgiven for. You put the piece of paper with your forgiveness wish in at one end and it was sucked through...

When "Asco: Elite of the Obscure" opens Sept. 4 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), we will witness the closing of a 40-year-old cultural loop. During the exhibition, a famous Asco (pronounced "oss-ko") image will be seen all around L.A., as Bank of America, one...

We live in a numbers world. Earlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Latinos now total 50.5 million people, making up 16.3% of the U.S. population, and grew by 43 percent between 2000 and 2010, or four times the nation's 9.7 percent growth rate.

For...

We have two major camps in the U.S. right now arguing over which economic problem is more pressing: Is it the deficit? Or, is it jobs?

The real problem is one of perception. Once our perception of the situation is clarified, the more urgent economic problem can be identified clearly.

A funny thing happened on the way to the American Dream for millions of American children whose parents are undocumented immigrants. In his new book, Immigrants Raising Citizens, Harvard education professor Hirokazu Yoshikawa tells us that the children of illegal immigrants show lower levels of cognitive development and...

A long-running misperception and stereotyping about Native Americans may get some needed reframing from one of the world's biggest movie stars. The Lone Ranger is going to follow not lead in actor Johnny Depp's version, probably to hit the screen in 2014. As reported in Entertainment Weekly (EW),...

The late actor and art collector Vincent Price once said, "I play men besieged by fate..." East Los Angeles College's new Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM), which opened on May 21, 2011, is a mark of destiny. For generations, the Eastside was usually seen as an add-on to...

Education is at a crossroads. It is the prime social space where our cultural and economic capital are created. People are credentialed and stamped with "approval" in the educational realm. Yet, this all-important arena where a process of "social alchemy" (in Pierre Bourdieu's words) is supposed to transform people, is...

The death of Osama bin Laden is a symbolic turning point in what's been called the "war on terror." After the horrific events of 9/11, Americans wanted to bring the chief perpetrator to justice. That's been done. It was also the main reason that we invaded Afghanistan.

If anything,...

Thursday, 4pm: we log on to read Kim Kardashian's tweets. Or Snooki's. Or, now, even Charlie Sheen's. It doesn't matter...

I'm amazed by the junk that's out there and our willingness to consume it. But I think Americans are actually tired of "fast-food" culture and need something more substantial. I...

Abraham Lincoln never really sent out a Christmas message for the simple reason that Christmas did not become a national holiday until 1870, five years after his death. Until then Christmas was a normal workday although people did often have special Christmas dinners with turkey, fruitcake and other treats.

If...

We seem to be reaching a tipping point in our national illegal immigration saga. Buried under all the heated rhetoric is a moral test for America. In some respects, it is reminiscent of the deep divisions that marked the national discourse that led to end of slavery in the 19th...

Reflecting on the mid-term election 72 hours afterward gives us some room to evaluate what it all meant for Latinos. At times, it seemed that we were the piñatas of the season and, in some instances, we seemed to be the harbingers of something new.

We were piñatas in...