Dollar bills provide the incentive for a child to button up. The adults are not so trainable.

Kill creativity and help make the world a better place!

The TNB editors select the best books of 2009.

In the months immediately following 9/11, singles across the nation felt the urge to merge. Determined to sally forth after the break-up of a three-year relationship, Alison Aucoin agreed to try speed dating. How could she possibly know that the search for her soul mate would bring encounters with a Bukowski-inspired plumber, a nerdy chain-restaurant connoisseur, a fellow wearing Mary Tyler Moore’s eyelashes, a one-eyed racist anti-Semite, and a rodeo clown?

Pierre Bayard’s ode to philistinism, Comment Parler des Livres que l’on n’a pas Lus, or How to Talk About Books That You Haven’t Read is a unique experience. Upon completion of Bayard’s work (one wonders if Bayard himself ever read his own book), I found myself first outraged, then confused, and finally, a little constipated. [...]

A move from Atlanta to Philadelphia spells disaster (minus the Chevy Chase-like hijinks) for Rob Bloom as his possessions are held hostage by crooked movers.

Ethical concerns over cloning and sexual robotics need not worry the righteous too terribly, not so much as our slowly shrinking ability to feel truth and honor, life and living, compassion not rooted in control or diffidence, of turning selves into spiritual clones and pop culture probots while religious zombie robots long to eat our [...]

On November 13th, 2005, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an electronics technician named Dale Airsman was attacked by his four-year-old llama named Charlie. The first indication of potential danger came early that morning, when Mr. Airsman walked out onto his property and heard Charlie let out an unusual growl, which then evolved into a high-pitched squeal. [...]

There’s the old Mahatma Gandhi quote: “You must be the change that you want to see in the world.” You see it on bumper stickers. You see it on peace signs. It seems simple enough, but naturally it’s harder than it sounds. It is alleged that Gandhi slept with naked young Hindu girls later in [...]