Life, Liberty, and… Free Markets? Somewhere in the Library of Congress sits a 35mm print of a 20-minute Technicolor cartoon from 1954. Its title is It’s Everybody’s Business, and its argument is that the American Bill of Rights and free-market capitalism are not simply compatible but are, at root, the same idea expressed in two … Read more
What If Gotham Called the Wrong Number? The Bat-Signal is one of fiction’s most instantly readable symbols. A city under siege, a searchlight aimed at the clouds, and somewhere in the dark, a protector takes notice. Since its first appearance in Detective Comics #60 in February 1942, that emblem has meant one thing: help is … Read more
The Windows Too Small for a Head, Just Right for a Bottle Walk through central Florence slowly enough and you’ll notice them: small stone-framed openings set into old palace walls, usually chest-high, about the size of a large hardcover book. Some still have tiny wooden shutters. Most people walk right past. That size, cut into … Read more
Twenty-Nine and Counting Most people treat graduation as a finish line. You cross it, shake a hand, and move on to whatever comes next. Michael Nicholson, who grew up in Detroit and has lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan since 1980, has crossed that line 30 times. Born in 1941, he completed his 29th degree and then … Read more
HEADLINE: Han Solo Almost Died in Empire, Toy Sales Reportedly Saved Him ARTICLE: The Character Who Was Too Popular to Kill Han Solo spends the end of “The Empire Strikes Back” frozen solid in carbonite, hauled off as a cliffhanger nobody saw resolved on screen. He comes back thawed out and just as sarcastic in … Read more
Thirteen Hours on a Pole In January 1924, a former sailor, boxer, and stuntman named Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly climbed to the top of a flagpole in Hollywood, California, and sat there for 13 hours and 13 minutes. No broadcast carried it to a waiting audience. By the time he climbed down, a crowd had assembled … Read more
A T-Shirt That Shouldn’t Work Picture a shirt: a hulking figure in an old diving suit, one arm ending in a spinning drill, standing where a soft round forest spirit should be. Next to him is a small girl in a yellow dress, watching him the way you’d watch a bus arrive. That’s “My Rapture … Read more
The Flag on the Tailgate Anyone who has hauled plywood home from the lumberyard knows the ritual. A standard sheet of plywood runs 8 feet long, and on plenty of pickups that’s enough to leave it sticking out past the tailgate. Someone zip-ties a red flag to the corner, and the drive home happens at … Read more
One Kilogram That Never Moves Take 100 kilograms of potatoes at 99% water: 99 kg of water, 1 kg of dry matter, starches, fiber, minerals. Let a little moisture escape, just enough to nudge the water content from 99% down to 98%. A single percentage point. The potatoes now weigh 50 kilograms. Half the original … Read more
A Gap Nobody Noticed The human nose has attracted considerable scholarly attention, from the outside, at least. Sander Gilman, a cultural and literary historian, spent his 1999 book Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery tracing how doctors and patients have reshaped the nose’s exterior across centuries, from syphilis-era reconstruction to modern … Read more