COLUMN
B202, Or, How You Fit Five Children and One Mother into a Three Bedroom Apartment

In 6445 Greene St., Apt. B202—the 1,699 square-foot Philadelphia apartment that has housed my family for twenty five and a half years—my mother slept in what she called a medieval bedchamber. Actually, it was a mattress tucked into a wooden loft in the east corner of the family room, across from a Himalayan-size range of clean but unfolded laundry and a five-shelf bookcase overflowing with (among other things) Polly Pocket houses, Bionic Hulk action figures, and plastic parking garages. The bedchamber was perpendicular to the trapeze. If you extended your legs while swinging from the trapeze, you could touch a black-framed poster titled “Rainbow Shabbat” with your toes.

February 1, 2013

Predicting the Unpredictable (or at least tyring)

“The Signal and the Noise” is an excellent attempt to teach the reader how to judge predictions. Most of the book, reviewers have noted, are about issues that modern statistics cannot predict—in the stock market, in predicting climate change, in the housing bubble, in predicting natural disasters. Perhaps this is why “The Signal and the Noise” is somewhat unsatisfying to me. In spite of Silver’s decent attempt, the book remains largely inaccessible to me.

January 25, 2013

A Sense of an Ending

The human condition, they say, is terminal; so are most television series.

January 25, 2013

An Epic Fail: Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln”

With twelve academy award nominations under its belt, including those for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, “Lincoln” seems to have won the opinion of the academy. Yet, the many times I checked my watch during just the first hour of “Lincoln” prompts me to wonder just how captivating of a film it really is. Although the film showcases a beautiful aesthetic permeated by a few strong performances, ultimately, I posit that the film’s flat plot line, distant characters, and lack of emotional upheaval leave the film cinematically vapid, generating a bland history lesson unqualified to win the modern film industry’s most prestigious award.

January 25, 2013

Shortened Punchlines

They say the hardest part of learning a new language is humor. But humor has been quick to worm its way into each “language” of the Internet.

January 18, 2013

Moves like Jagger, that is, with a walker

Dear Mick: It’s time for you to die.

January 18, 2013

'I don’t think I deserve a profile in the YDN.'

Less than a year out of college, Drew Westphal ’10 decided to throw caution to the wind and quit his prestigious, high-paying consulting job. Where he landed next, no one could have predicted.

January 18, 2013

AARON Z. LEWIS
‘Is Our Children Learning?’

Why do our children seem not to learn? Why do some children do better than others? How do some children break the cycle of poverty? In “How Children Succeed,” freelance journalist Paul Tough addresses all these questions.

December 7, 2012

My Flat, Donut-Shaped Friends

It was a good run, my donut-shaped friends, but it seems that the end is upon us. 2012 is shaping up as the first year in which digital music sales will outpace CD sales, the culmination of a trend that shows no inclination towards reversal.

December 7, 2012

“Cloud Atlas” and the Art of Adaptation

If the original novel "Cloud Atlas" is a genre-bending exploration of humanity, the screen version is a haphazardly beautiful hot mess.

November 30, 2012

Yale College Theater, From a Tomato’s Perspective

I wanted to be in a play, which partly explains how I ended up surrounded by scattered bits of Chex Mix and sticky tomato seeds on the floor of the JE Theater, wearing only a large red turtleneck, pretending to be dead.

November 30, 2012