There may be no lexicon more complicated and defined by its nuance than the one used to describe teenagers’ dating patterns. The struggle to define a relationship in commonly understood language once led a friend of mine to label someone “not my girlfriend,” which of course als/… Read full post »

Annie Lowery has an oh so typically Slate piece up on the site about the economics of teen dating. The article is about a recent paper from Duke researchers that found myths of teen dating were true: the researchers “found one classic economic tenet driving the byzantin/… Read full post »

In the run-up to the spectacular promotional event that is Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, the two hosts have been promoting it like Avon representatives. In last night’s segment, they talked to Washington’s indigenous protesters, including one… Read full post »

Today’s “National Coming Out Day” seems particularly resonant because of a recent spat of high-profile acts of anti-queer violence. A wave of gay suicides and the torture of three men in New York have put many of us who don’t hate queers on the offensive, publicizing/… Read full post »

x-post from destructural

There have been a number of thoughtful responses to Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker piece about social media, so I’ll keep my comments relatively brief, but the article’s flaws are just too embarrassing not to write something. I h… Read full post »

“In such heedful fleeing lies the flight from death, that is, a looking away from the end of being-in-the-world. This looking away from … is in itself a mode of  the ecstatic, futural being toward the end.”… Read full post »

Nissan is entering the all-electrical car market with the “Leaf,” a name that would have seemed inconceivable ten years ago. The Leaf ad Nissan debuted during last Thursday’s NFL opener is symptomatic of the kind of appeals marketers have had to use in this ideological climate:

Bill Maher has been playing a game of video hostage with Delaware Republican Senate Nominee Christine O’Donnell, since she made the repeated youthful indiscretion of appearing on his show “Politically Incorrect.” The tapes are leaking at a steady pace, and she’s made head… Read full post »

x-posted from destructural

I gave up watching Entourage about the same time I gave up flipping through Maxim magazine at newsstands. Even though they both appealed to part of me, it was a dark sad part that I knew I had to grow out of, or risk being stuck in perpetual ad… Read full post »