A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in life meeting in heaven with hugs, high-fives, and wincingly earnest exchanges. These sentimental vignettes are almost too easy to parody, a kitschy version of the “what if” game, as in: what if two creative geniuses could collaborate in […]

Designing their new republic, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked back to reference points in classical antiquity. That instinct continued to shape American endeavors long thereafter, and not just political ones. Take the example of Mount Rushmore, one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. Originally conceived in the early nineteen-twenties […]

David Lynch loved his coffee. For decades, the filmmaker let coffee fuel his creativity, drinking five, six, even seven cups per day at Bob’s Big Boy. Famously, Lynch celebrated coffee in Twin Peaks (remember the line, “That’s a damn fine cup of coffee!”), and later directed a whole mini-season of Twin Peaks in the form […]

At a 1998 conference on technology and life, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams once proposed the notion of a sentient puddle. Imagine it “waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, […]