Well, this is disgusting. I joined a dating site, OKCupid, early last week. (Stop chuckling. That’s not the disgusting part.) I’m not a big dating site fan, but a friend said it was fun, so I figured I’d give it a try. I’m a explorer by nature. I try stuff. Anyway, OkCupid allows users to… Read more »
You’re going to think I’m nuts. But I’m growing convinced: The Web has trashed the American economy. Back in the ’20s, mass production transformed the way we made and bought things. Henry Ford and his magnate brethren learned how to make vast quantities of consumer items quickly, and to sell those consumer items, they had… Read more »
I am beginning to think that Twitter appeals to the lazy guy in me. Instead of posting something here, I tweet it (@bastable) because that’s quicker and shorter. But so many of my activities are not being properly preserved except at the Library of Congress. Last night, for example. I went to the opening party… Read more »
It happened on March 25, but there had been warnings for years. Factory owners across America amassed fortunes by exploiting what was, at the time, a seemingly inexhaustible resource: immigrants. Newly arrived Europeans were expendable. They had a weak political voice, so crossing them had little negative impact for politicians and none for businessmen, since… Read more »
Since mid-December, I’ve been appearing on CBS’s The Early Show more or less weekly. Strangely, I find it easier than my weekly segment on Fox Philly partly because at CBS, I can actually have a conversation with the person sitting across from me. Part of the reason is because the staff is truly nice, and… Read more »
I interviewed Anthony Bourdain for *********. He was driving his car somewhere, so he put on his car speaker and I chatted with him as he owned the highway, like William Daniels and the Hoff, if the Hoff was a genius writer and not a clown. His response to my last question was so good, but… Read more »
Do you even know what’s happening to your news? Media companies are tracking the hot terms that people are searching for from minute to minute, and when those terms come up on their computers, there’s a little button. Hit that button and a new rough draft is created with those search terms as the topic…. Read more »
Before I was a travel writer, I was a full-time traveler. I spent nearly two years out on the road, backpacking around the world. And for many months of that journey, I conducted with an unusual experiment. Every day at 3 o’clock on the dot, no matter where I was or what I was doing,… Read more »
The government doesn’t pay much attention to making sure we can get where we need to go. Subway lines are falling apart, buses infrequent, train systems decimated, and high-speed rail has been politicized into a fantasy. The ways in which we suffer extend far beyond mere inconvenience. In America, getting there is not considered a… Read more »
So… have a look at this guy. Do you know who this is? I have this picture pinned up by my desk. It’s not hard to see what’s so captivating about it. This 21-year-old kid is smug! There’s something incredibly cocky about the little devil; he just thinks he knows all the answers, doesn’t he?… Read more »