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It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle as a recent phenomenon. And indeed, there have been periods during which that wasn’t the case: the “New Hollywood” that began in the late nineteen sixties, for instance, when the old studio system handed the reins to inventive young guns like […]
On Tuesday, the cardinals locked themselves into the Sistine Chapel, officially beginning the conclave to elect the 267th pope. First formalized by Pope Gregory X in 1274, the conclave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, meaning “with a key”) follows a highly scripted process honed over the past 800 years. How the conclave […]
Today, 133 cardinals from around the world enter the conclave to determine the next pope, during which they’ll cast their votes in the Sistine Chapel. Despite being one of the most famous tourist attractions in Europe, the Sistine Chapel still serves as a venue for such important official functions, just as it has since its […]
Several years back, Colin Marshall highlighted George Orwell’s essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Standard on January 12, 1946. In that article, Orwell weighed in on a subject the English take seriously–how to make the perfect cup of tea. (According to Orwell, “tea is one of the mainstays of civilization.”) And […]
Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and later refined in Japan, Zen Buddhism has long appealed to Westerners as well. Some of that owes to the spare, elegant aesthetics with which popular culture associates it, and more to the promise it holds out: freedom from […]
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Workers have rarely gotten the long end of the stick. The seduction of “do what you’re told and you’ll win valuable prizes” often doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and so it’s not surprising that many people are skeptical about delivering something extra–work is called work for a reason. At the same time, one of the […]
A data-driven investigation of movie hero mortality rates
It’s thrilling when someone reads our minds. Sometimes we call it hospitality, or smart user interface design. Sometimes, it simply feels like being seen. The person or the system knows what you need, perhaps before you even realize what that might be. This is a special sort of magic. It’s easy to take this for […]
