Breaking Bad‘s finale was a little disappointing. After the relentless darkness of the second half of the fifth season, I had let myself believe that the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, would go all the way and serve up a stark, brutal ending, one that would put the finishing touches on the show’s reputation as anContinue reading “Breaking Bad and Walter White’s Too-Neat Conclusion”
Category Archives: General
Turn Down the Comments; We’re Talking Science Here
A couple of days ago, Popular Science decided to turn off comments on news articles. In a blog post, Suzanne LaBarre explained why: Comments can be bad for science. That’s why, here at PopularScience.com, we’re shutting them off….[W]e are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of scienceContinue reading “Turn Down the Comments; We’re Talking Science Here”
The Baby Industrial Complex
When you bring home a baby, you bring home something else as well: a subscription, a ticket to a strange new domain, one populated by goods designed and manufactured for babies–and their parents–to better equip them for all of life’s supposed challenges, to train, dress, entertain, edify, and amuse them. An industry of industries churnsContinue reading “The Baby Industrial Complex”
I’d Rather Be ‘Working’?
A New Yorker cartoon shows us a car careening down the street; from the rear, we can make out the silhouettes of a mother and three children in their car-seats; a ball is being thrown up in the air; and on the back of the car, a bumper sticker reads ‘I’d rather be working.’ ParentsContinue reading “I’d Rather Be ‘Working’?”
Concert at the Corner
The boy with the violin case came around the corner. On time, as always. Head bowed, feet dragging on the sidewalk, the case drooping by his side, as always. He approached A__’s gang, scattered on the sidewalk, oblivious to their presence. Till A__ spoke. ‘Hey!’ The boy looked up, alarm running through his body quicklyContinue reading “Concert at the Corner”
A Failure of Kindness
The George Saunders graduation speech currently making the rounds of the Internet reminds me of a failure of kindness of my own. I have committed many, of course, too many to remember or recount; I pick on this one, because, quite frankly, besides being memorable in all the wrong ways, it is a little lessContinue reading “A Failure of Kindness”
Hudson Crossings
Yesterday, at the World Trade Center transit station, as I took the escalator down to the PATH train, heading for an afternoon spent with a cousin living in Exchange Place, New Jersey, I made note of a little datum: I’ve been crossing the Hudson–in both directions–for over twenty-five years. One such crossing, back in 1993,Continue reading “Hudson Crossings”
‘Little Clouds’ and ‘Enemies of Ambition’
Children leave you little time for ‘work.’ Children are work. They displace priorities; many a career ambition runs aground on the shoals of their demands and needs. So goes an exceedingly common complaint, especially from those who consider themselves ‘creative types’: writers, artists and the like. As Cyril Connolly once noted, ‘That enemy of ambition,Continue reading “‘Little Clouds’ and ‘Enemies of Ambition’”
A Long, Hot, Sickened Journey
The worst of the heat might have receded from New York City but that’s not going to deter me from churning out another hot weather-related blog post. On this occasion, about a time when a combination of heat and a mysterious ailment combined to induce in me a misery that has, thankfully, not been rivaledContinue reading “A Long, Hot, Sickened Journey”
Memories of Hot Summers Elsewhere
Talking about the weather is supposedly a concession, an admission that a conversation has run aground, spun off into irrelevancies; nothing, it seems, quite shows the lack of an agenda for an exchange of words like a discussion about the heat, the cold, the rain. Well, I admit defeat; I admit I’m tongue-tied and incoherent.Continue reading “Memories of Hot Summers Elsewhere”
Samir Chopra 