For what it's worth, I do think "gray rape" is a valid concept. Consent is often a complicated issue and miscommunications, particularly between young people, do occur. And, yes, nobody should ever be engaging in any type of sex where the consent is not 100% clear to them, but it does happen that well-meaning people…

If you do re-read Huck Finn, don't let the first few chapters turn you away; Twain rather purposefully structures the first Jim scene as a minstrel show routine, so it can be a bit daunting until you get into the meat of it.

I teach a lot, and by virtue of my Y chromosome I'm statistically way more likely to molest children. When I come into an institution - particularly a Catholic school, or an arts program that permits a certain amount of necessary, appropriate contact - if they vet me extra hard, or if they require extra safety or…

"It's hard to beat [Jesus]. You can't."

It's almost like being a very, very famous person who gets approached by people all the time would make you not want to seem engaging to strangers.

It's because the internet has taken away our ability to figure out if we're talking to a reasonable human being or a precocious, someday-they'll-be-cool-but-now-they're-offended-by-everything high schooler.

Actually, upon relistening, I think the delay is already mostly present in the original track, and that what they're doing is a "radio effect" - implying artificiality by EQing out the highs and the lows.

If I wanted to continue being pedantic, I could point out that that's audio engineering, not music theory. This would increase my snooty know-it-all-ness by a factor of 8.

It's not a chorus, it's a delay. It implies distance rather than creepiness.

That sounds a bit like the movies, actually.

Whoa, the blind guy from Star Trek has his own reality show?!

They used her size to make her look like Divine, the drag queen who was the inspiration for her look.

I think of him as a really forward-thinking 1940's screenwriter. His women are strong, witty, powerful, and independent, yes; they're also largely absent from the stories, possessive of a more flighty neuroticism than the (equally neurotic) men, and find a guy who doesn't totally respect their boundaries (Danny with…

Dana from Sports Night is actually a complete strawman of a female boss. She regularly screws up her own job, manages her employees poorly, lets her personal jealousies color her handling of her show's star, and melts down in front of her staff.

On the other hand, and while I realize this is a limited argument: No straight reporter has ever had to "come out" as straight. The mere fact that Cooper made no effort to hide his orientation is in itself both tremendously brave and a fantastic indicator of how far our culture has come on gay rights. And hopefully in…

Shaving with an electric shaver isn't a distracting activity, though. You don't really need to pay attention to what you're doing; just make sure it's on and move it around your face.

Pinpointing specific behaviors to specific genes can be problematic because our DNA doesn't function as a blueprint - it's more like a recipe. So certain genes or the activation of genes may be correlated with certain behavioral traits, but that shit is hard to pin down. Somewhat more easy to pin down, behaviors can…

El Centro, a delicious mexican(ish) place on 54th and 9th, has some of the most gorgeous hunky servers, and they all wear tight shirts.

I mean, I'm in New York, and I'll be damned if half the restaurants I eat at don't hire the hunkiest guys on the planet.

A family friend wrote a webseries called "Little Women, Big Cars." I misreported it as "Big Women, Little Cars" and upon realizing my mistake was like, Holy Shit, that's a fetish market that hasn't been explored yet.