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Keep Our Scouts Lithe, Boyish, and Neckerchiefed
This year, 30,000 Scouts ages 12 to 20 and their leaders were required to meet a threshold for body mass index and other health factors before being allowed to participate [in the National Scout...
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Why Some Words Are More Dangerous than Others
Language is kind of like the economy; even though humans supposedly invented it, we don’t really get how it works. One idea that’s been around for a long time (since Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the...
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Let Us Now Praise Rats
Rats make excellent pets. They’re smarter than hamsters and friendlier than cats, lower maintenance than dogs and livelier than fish. A rat will sit on your shoulder while you finish your homework; a...
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Smug Reality: Intervention and the Rehab Industry
In episode nine of Intervention’s fifth season, the show featured perhaps its most memorable case. Allison, a 20-something woman with a severe addiction to inhalants, drives her car to a grocery story...
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The State of Emergency in Bankrupt Detroit
We must disenthrall ourselves: The first thing to understand about Detroit’s bankruptcy is that it has almost nothing to do with the troubles of the US automobile industry. Sure, GM and Ford’s...
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Sashay Away, Emmys: The Case For RuPaul's Drag Race
Year after year, the Emmys fuck up.Remember when Jon Cryer of the men’s rights support group that is Two and a Half Men won for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, beating Larry David and Louis...
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Waste More Time, Be More Productive
That can’t be right, can it? It says here that I’ve played the mobile game Real Racing 3 for 40 hours. That’s a full work-week spent I’ve spent racing virtual cars. Staring at the figure, it is...
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The Shame Spiral of a Groupon Purchase
There was a time when Groupon was to be the dawn of a beautiful consumer revolution—a glorious system through which we would all purchase goods and services at rock-bottom prices, provided a...
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What if the Royal Baby is Chinese?
If your job feels frustrating and meaningless, just remember that there are adult professionals currently on Royal Baby Watch.Outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital in London, professional...
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What Went Wrong This Week For … Hot Chicks
Welcome to Well, That Sucked, our weekly compendium of exactly what it sounds like. Thrown in this week’s garbage: babes.Boy, oh boy, we broads sure have come a long way. Can you believe that it was...
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Preparing for the End of the World
According to some, I’m a fool even to sign my name to this article. Because now that I’m telling you about my emergency supply of extra batteries, canned food, bottles of water, and a radio, when...
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Hoarding Aluminum For Fun and Profit
Goldman Sachs has discovered a new innovation in warehousing and distributing aluminum: warehousing and not distributing aluminum. Goldman, which Matt Taibbi once described as “a great vampire squid...
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Difficult Men and the World Beyond TV’s Antiheroes
Andrew Pyper’s 2008 mystery The Killing Circle is a creepily dark little story that managed to update the urban paranoia of ‘70s American films into the increasingly scrubbed cityscape of ‘00s...
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Israel
Every summer, thousands of young Jewish kids from 60 countries flood into the narrow alleyways, market stalls, and fertile valleys of Israel on an annual pilgrimage known as Birthright. In theory,...
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What Would You Like to Forget?
Sylvia broke up with me a few months after we’d both started university, over the phone, with a simple, curt phrase: “He kissed me and I kissed him back.” A couple weeks later, feeling like I should...
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Sam Sutherland: Punk on the Page
Shelf Esteem is a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelves belong to Sam Sutherland, a music journalist...
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Pet Shop Boys: Every Single Single
Other pop musicians have burned brighter and more briefly, but I can’t name any who rival the Pet Shop Boys’ extraordinary longevity and consistency. Three decades after former Marvel Comics UK editor...
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Andy Kaufman is Still Alive
Andy Kaufman has just released his first comedy record, a remarkable feat since Mr. Kaufman has been dead for almost 30 years. Andy and His Grandmother is not an album in the traditional sense, but...
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The Monarchy is Indefensible, But It’s Ours
When Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, the first openly lesbian head of government in Canada’s history, took office, there was a minor formality that had to be observed. Like every other premier and...
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The World’s Greatest View of Detroit
The waterfront park in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, is a five-kilometre long stretch of lawns and gardens that runs along the Detroit River. There’s even a remarkable collection of public art...
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