News & Features

Having grown up in an area where my friends were equally likely to be Jewish or Christian, I had always simply accepted that everyone had their own religious holidays, traditions and celebrations. At my previous job in Massachusetts, I had a good friend who celebrated BOTH Christmas and Chanukah … which was due to her family accepting the dual pull of religion and materialism! Despite being a Christian myself, I firmly believe that pretending that the predominant thought at this time of year amongst Christians is religion, is just pretending. That doesn’t diminish the holiday we celebrate, it just reflects…

The periodic table of the elements is a great visual tool that allows you to quickly discover elements by means of a two-dimensional look-up method that encompasses multiple aspects. That visual tool has been used for many things … and has now been put to use as a work of interactive art by Jon Link and Mick Bunnage of Modern Toss. It is, quite simply, a fully cross-referenced guide to British swearing. Here is a look at the modern uses of the periodic table that refers to the Modern Toss table: Artists and designers fascinated by the periodic table have…

(not for wearing to your local Post Office) The day before Halloween I went out for a run, and about a 1/2 mile from my house, across the street from me, I saw a guy running in the opposite direction, dressed all in black. Not wearing black clothes, I mean head to toe spandex, similar to this outfit. My first thought was “OMG the Rubber Man from American Horror Story is coming to get me!” My second was, “ok, breathe. It’s the day before Halloween, that’s clearly a costume, and insane ghost murderers don’t give you friendly waves as they…

When I was young Pearl Harbor Day got a lot of attention, as there were many WWII vets alive and it allowed a focus on something that was NOT Vietnam or Watergate. In the past decade as we have been embroiled in militarism, nation-building and general global conflicts, there has been plenty of other tragedy to pull our attention. Yet forgetting our history dooms us to repeat it, so it is important to remember the events of December 7th, 1941. Here are the historical details: At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the…

There is a great awkward scene from just about every teen movie I can remember growing up – the boy and girl are getting passionate, but before anything ‘happens’ he realizes he needs a condom. He heads to the local pharmacy where getting the condoms involves dealing with (a) the girl’s father (b) another authority figure (c) the girl he REALLY loves (d) some combination of these or another cliche. This isn’t used as much today since most people can stroll anonymously into a local Walmart and avoid the difficulty entirely … well, not entirely: the people working there are…

When I was growing up, the echoes of the 60’s and early 70’s protests along with the brutal police response lingered heavily along with the post-Vietnam era … and as more civil protests and cooperative ways to try to change things, so too did the police response – and the outfits they wore. I was flipping through an old copy of a local paper that covered the school walkout in 1981 at the announcement of the impact of the Proposition 2.5 cutbacks on the school. The headline said 200 walked out and there were 5 arrests. The images showed a…