Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides rating: 4 of 5 stars About a month ago, online buzz surrounded a “gender analyzer” tool designed to determine whether a Web site was written by a man or a woman. I was reminded of the flurry of indignation and amusement caused by the tool (on my personal site: “We guess [...]

I make latkes the wrong way, as you’ll see, but latkes always feel right as people crowd into the kitchen and surreptitiously select one from the growing pile, volunteering to grate potatoes for the next batch. This is an excellent reason to keep potatoes on hand and just the thing for happy hours in lazy [...]

I arrived in New Orleans very early Thursday morning, just ahead of the snow: And that was just the beginning of a few days full of lagniappe—the little extra bits of magic revealed as you wander this town. Here, the good stuff finds you. After a day of panels for the Do It With Drupal [...]

Rather than the ubiquitous sweets surrounding this season, I’m craving umami, the indulgent fifth taste that I close my eyes to savor. This is a stack of recipes that I combine into hors d’oeuvres, but anchovy aioli and chicken liver pâté are always nice to have on hand—whether or not you assemble them on toasted [...]

This review is also on Goodreads, a community site for nerds who liked writing book reports in third grade and still do. These are my people. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy by Lawrence Lessig rating: 3 of 5 stars Larry Lessig beckons us in his new book, Remix, to think [...]