The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—CBS insists it was purely a “financial decision,” the result of declining ad revenue in late night television. Others see it as a different kind of “financial decision,” a decision by Paramount (the parent company of CBS) to sacrifice Colbert so that the American president won’t cancel […]

At least the Powerball tells the truth. In a state run lottery, the deal is very simple: You pay your money, you take your chances. The government randomly chooses a winner and the winner gets a big prize and everyone else gets nothing. But there are lotteries all around us, hidden in plain sight. There […]

Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel reportedly carried rocks in their pockets during the premiere of their first film Un Chien Andalou, anticipating a violent reaction from the audience. It was a fair concern. The movie might be almost 90 years old but it still has the power to provoke – the film features a shot of […]

Is it okay to dress your cat in a ridiculous costume? What about giving a poodle a haircut that subjects him to ridicule? The cat and the dog probably don’t know or care, but we think less of their person if it happens. At Disney, the costumed characters need security guards. Kids (and more often) […]

It’s tempting, in telling the story of the Edith Farnsworth House, to break out clichés like “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” For the residence in question is made predominantly of glass, or rather glass and steel, and its first owner turned out to have more than a few stones for its […]