popular culture

Whether Dobson was forced out or not, a “new face” has been in the cards.

She didn’t need to go to Mecca to learn about Islam.

In the ever more dystopian world of Syfy Channel’s Caprica, teenage girls inhabit robot bodies, or live eternally without bodies at all, human bodies are marked by memories, and all the while there is blood flowing in the virtual streets.

Avatar had audiences rooting for nature, against the destruction of marauding tanks—but the Oscar went to the film that offered a soldier’s-eye view.

The Times columnist’s latest betrays a terrifying ignorance of Islam.

Recent studies show that children as young as three years old use “brand cues” to choose among food and play options—and thus is a Pandora’s toybox opened.

Claiming to oppose ‘scientific dogma’ climate change foes seek to ‘teach the controversy’ in schools.

In this second installment of Mark Dery’s autobiographical essay (a “nonfiction novella”) about a suburban teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust, our hero has his congenitally straight brain blown in a late-night, black and white encounter with the confusingly feminine Ziggy during Bowie’s final appearance as the character.

The one thing that seems able to tame even a hardened cynic like Holden Caufield, in the least overtly religious Salinger book, is an encounter with the innocence of childhood; especially children at play. It is this quest for lost innocence that defines the spiritual trajectory of Salinger’s most memorable characters. They are all teachers, parents, players, children-at-heart.

As the ‘gods’ of Hollywood descend in designer digs, religion scholars Gary Laderman and Anthea Butler discuss the divinity of celebrity in America.