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Scrawl of Duty
Novelists and journalists are defecting to the video-game industry
Attendance was low for a recent showcase at concert promoter Todd “P” Patrick’s pop-up video-games gallery near Grand Central Terminal. The event felt like a transplanted loft party, decorated with papier-mâché furniture and cabinets with experimental video games from Babycastles, an indie arcade in Ridgewood, Queens.
Read More »A Season of Giving for the Mega-Rich
Prodded by Buffett, a second wave of gazillionaires lines up to give away
Help for the Needy
As everyone else struggles, our swag-aholics live off of corporate hooch
Unless you’re in college or living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, giving a birthday dinner in a restaurant implies paying for your guests. But if you’re an influencer? That’s another story. Influencers are the new fresh-air children. They aren’t just famous people or the media, obvious targets of corporate largesse.
Read More »The Original WikiLeaker
John Young was one of the founders of the muckraking website—or maybe he wasn’t
“I don’t drink water,” said John Young. The 74-year-old architect was an early associate of WikiLeaks and has run his own document-publishing website, Cryptome.org since 1996. “Why drink water when there is alcohol?”
Young sipped his coffee and looked surprised as I guzzled a glass of water. He asked if I owned a water filter, inquired about my daily water intake and then wondered if I was addicted to water.
Read More »The Great Murdoch iPad Debate
The Daily is preparing for its big debut. What is it and why do we care?
What’s behind the schizophrenic anticipation for News Corp.’s iPad-only newspaper, the Daily? Why is half of New York rooting for its demise, and the other half greeting its arrival like the second coming?
Read More »Shared homeownership could mean paying your neighbors’ bills
For those who have a lot of cash or can get credit, this could be an ideal time to buy a house—the foreclosure crisis has pushed prices down and interest rates are way low.
But beware if you are looking to buy a condominium, co-op, town house or other property that’s part of a homeownership group. Another side effect of the foreclosure crisis is that you could end up responsible for some of your neighbors’ bills.
Read More »Apocalypse Now!
I had something unpleasant happen to me in October. I met an old friend for lunch. Let’s call him Alan. I hadn’t seen Alan for years, not since we were the only male members of the Mahjong team in college. One day he popped up on my Facebook page, asking to friend me. I friended him back, and that was that. After a few weeks, he suggested we meet. He was flying in from Bahrain, he said, on business.
Read More »With Medicare plan changes coming soon, seniors should re-evaulate their coverage
Nobody likes to deal with their medical plan choices—maybe least of all seniors.
About 80 percent of older Americans remain in whatever Medicare plan they started with, even when unhappy with the care, according to a recent survey by Allsup, an Illinois-based Social Security and Medicare consulting firm.
Read More »Dancing With the Scars
Who said Sarah Palin doesn’t read? In September 2008, I wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Mark Burnett—the creator of Survivor and the father of reality television—had become the Republicans’ intellectual god as the GOP had grasped, with something like creative genius, the fact that in contemporary American democracy authority had to be humbled before it could lead.
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