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Daily Bafflements
June 17, 2015
• Over at Pacific Standard, Alana Massey pulls up the research that explains why men congratulate themselves for doing more childcare than they truly do. “[F]athers’ desires to be present for their children,” one study concludes, ...

Smile Like You Mean It
June 16, 2015
Such is the exuberant optimism of the staff at Pret A Manger that you’d assume they were treated well. But Pret A Manger’s employees aren’t overjoyed because of good workplace conditions, generous wages, or regular hours; instead it’s because management ...

Daily Bafflements
June 16, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: one architect has figured that when the zombie underclasses revolt, luxury apocalypse shelters will be a must. His five-star bunker is equipped to withstand nuclear blasts with “self-contained water, power, climate, ventilation, air ...

Daily Bafflements
June 15, 2015
• Yesterday, pundits commented that Jeb Bush’s new logo (“Jeb!”) downplays his dynastic Bushiness. Maybe so. But with this move, Jeb, whose name is an acronym of “John Ellis Bush,” is also divesting himself of his ...

Spoof Vs. Spy
June 12, 2015
Summer 2015’s first big blockbuster comedy, Spy, may traffic in elaborate onscreen subterfuge, but it’s little more than the latest variation on a baby-simple, well-worn Hollywood formula.The movie’s admittedly energetic and amusing aim is to lampoon and critique the ...

Flakes Alive!
June 12, 2015
On not attending the Left Forum  A few weeks back in Manhattan, hundreds of socialists, communists, anarchists, and even few decent “small-d” democrats shuffled into the unlikely venue of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (ironically, best known as a ...

Daily Bafflements
June 12, 2015
• Today in Billionaires: inequality is terribly unfair, not least for billionaires. This surprisingly present sentiment was expressed most recently by Johann Rupert, the chairman of the company that owns Cartier. Speaking at the Financial ...

The American Way
June 11, 2015
Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni man, filed suit against the United States government this week over the deaths of his brother-in-law and nephew in an unlawful 2012 drone strike. The suit is a tenacious follow up to an occasion in 2014 when Jaber was handed bundles of cash ...

Daily Bafflements
June 11, 2015
• Today in catering (badly) to Millennials: Whole Foods is opening a new chain of stores targeting Millennial customers. The new “365” stores will be “fun and convenient,” according to 365 division president Jeff Turnas, and will offer all the pretension of ...

Watching the Watchers
June 10, 2015
The imposing edifice of the security state is propped up by many tools. Mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk, and endless war (those old standbys) get help from Stingray devices, license plate scanners, surveillance blimps, and a thousand different ways to data-mine. Should we pin ...

Daily Bafflements
June 10, 2015
• This week’s DARPA Robotics Challenge had us wondering: Why, when have we set the bar so low for them, are robots still so astoundingly inadequate? Case in point, provided by the BBC: One robot, “nicknamed Running Man, was so confident on its second day finish that when ...

Shutting Up
June 09, 2015
This weekend, I used up one of my ten free monthly views of The New York Times to find film critic A.O. Scott declaring a national “humor crisis.” No, he wasn’t referring to any of his colleague Maureen Dowd’s perennial struggles with political humor; rather, he ...