On December 23, 1983, I gifted Beth an elegant three-speed Peugeot bicycle, replete with nifty folding baskets, for her birthday. And then I gifted me by asking her to marry me. She said yes. The next day, the low temperature in Chicago was -25, the high was -11. That’s temperature, not wind chill. The […]

I ran across an article last week that tackled, or attempted to tackle, a meaningless question that lingers nonetheless, like a musical earworm: What’s with all the mattress stores? And for that matter, with the onslaught of mattress ads? You can read or listen to the NPR story here, but in the end, it really […]

NASA InSight Mission crew celebrates the successful landing on Mars. Back in grade school, there were exciting days when our teacher would wheel a battleship-grey cart carrying a big black-and-white TV into the corner of our classroom. The teacher would tune to CBS and Walter Cronkite, or sometimes to ABC and Jules Bergman, and together, […]

We live in a media driven world. A supply-side scheme where large media outlets, especially cable TV, regardless of perceived political stripes, know how to stretch content to fill time, spread narratives and aggravate the hell out of us. And they know that anger and spectacle somehow keeps bringing us back. They’re in the eyeballs […]

Just got back last night from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois — Mike drove Whitney and me down there so I could give a presentation to a lecture hall of 400+undergraduates enrolled in an Animal Sciences class at the University of Illinois. Inspired by the Pick of the Litter documentary Mike posted about on Monday, I spent a […]