Film critic Roger Ebert, like Pauline Kael before him, leaves behind a great torrent of words. Those of us accustomed to seeking out his opinion can comfort ourselves on the Internet, where his thoughts on the great (and not-so-great) films of the last four decades live in perpetuity.

To eat bacon sandwiches? Or not to eat bacon sandwiches? That’s a question tackled by David Spiegelhalter, who holds the title, “Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk” at Cambridge University. Sometimes they just call him “Professor Risk” for short.

(FYI: Orson first appears at the 2:29 mark.)
I’ve never gone near Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace. The very idea of a gambling complex of such labyrinthine vastness, slick luxury, and relatively recent construction—especially given the ancient-Rome simulacrum it goes for here and there—frightens me.

Frank Catalfumo, now 90-and-a-half years old, opened F&C Shoes in 1945, a shoe repair store in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. During the past 70+ years, everything around Frank has changed. Prices have gone up; neighboring stores have come and gone, probably many times over. But one thing has remained the same.

Pa, the horses got out of the barn again, and danged if they don’t appear to have passed through the Museum of Natural History on their way to Grand Central.

Unlike the typewriter, the lowly fax machine never pulled itself out of the hive-like existence of utilitarian office machines and into literary celebrity. With their bland, functional styling, fax machines will not have their impending obsolescence capped with museum exhibitions.

Doctor, what does it mean if you dream of creating a font of Freud’s handwriting?
This is exactly what German typographer Harald Geisler has in mind, and, in the spirit of self-actualization, he’s funding the project on Kickstarter.

Alan Watts began popularizing the teachings of Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism in America during the 1950s.

Bertrand Russell saw the history of civilization as being shaped by an unfortunate oscillation between two opposing evils: tyranny and anarchy, each of which contain the seed of the other. The best course for steering clear of either one, Russell maintained, is liberalism.

What if that screen you’re peering at was something akin to a one-way mirror? There’s a definite aspect of dressing room horror, viewing artist Robbie Cooper’s Immersion project, a video collection of the alternately grotesque and dull expressions appearing on people’s faces as they play video games and watch YouTube.