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.

As gearheads go, Brendan Chilcutt’s a pretty sentimental guy, and not just because he signs his correspondence with “love.” In January, 2012, he founded the Museum of Endangered Sounds to keep outmoded technology’s most iconic noises from vanishing from the collective memory.

On reddit, a user wrote yesterday, “My boyfriend of 7 years and I are both physicists. Here’s how he proposed to me.

Certain readers may turn, for general solace, to the novels of John Steinbeck. But how many, in particular need of romantic advice, open up Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, or The Grapes of Wrath? Yet on matters of the heart, Steinbeck knew of what he spoke, as his son Thom found out after mentioning a new school sweetheart in a note home.

The British comedian Graham Chapman delighted in offending people. As a writer and actor with the legendary Monty Python troupe, he often pushed against the boundaries of propriety and good taste.

The posthumous discovery of Vivian Maier’s photographs is an art world stunner on the order of Henry Darger‘s massive In the Realms of the Unreal.
The synchronicity makes one wonder.
He was a Chicago-based custodian.
She was a Chicago-based nanny.

In 2001, Janet Stephens, a Baltimore hairdresser, caught sight of a bust of Roman empress Julia Domna at the Walters Art Museum (the image above is of a bust in the Louvre). Captivated by the philosopher empress’s hairdo, she thought “holy cow, that is so cool… like a loaf of bread sitting on her head.

At the end of my college years, I found I needed to take one final political science course to complete my major. I chose a small summer session on the subject of virtue.

The future’s uncertainty has paralyzed many an artist. How to begin?
Were you to take the advice of 6-year-old Asa Baker-Rouse, you might show the word “start” in a box, add an equals sign, frame it with a box, make the word orange, then green, then white in a green box….