A very interesting article in yesterday’s New York Times explains that our brains are often at their most active, creative and effective when trying to process bad instructions, misinformation, or trying to find patterns when no signs are present. The accompanying image (pictured) shows a blank road sign on a desert road, which got us [...]

In case you didn’t know it (or hear about it over at our big brother The L Magazine) we’re currently celebrating Banned Book Week here in the U.S., which means reading up on the rich tradition of literary censorship in America. One way you might familiarize yourself with popular targets is by reading Banned Book [...]

We know you’ve been waiting for it all year, and now it’s finally here: National Punctuation Day! Obviously, everyone )ourselves included( misuses punctuation all the time, so it’s important to have days like today to raise awareness of proper punctuation rules. In fact, we’re taking today’s lessons so seriously that we’re contemplating getting a punctuation [...]

Sending kids to stand in the corner to reprimand naughty behavior seems, well, slightly arcane as far as ways of flexing parental authority go. Why not make them wear dunce caps too while we’re at it? A slightly more humane–though infinitely more creepy and still on balance foolish–variation of the standing in the corner punishment [...]

Today, for some reason we can’t quite figure out, is National Play-Doh Day. Our only hunch is that today may be the 54th anniversary of the invention of the product by Joseph McVicker, although we’ve had a hard time pinning down an exact date. Regardless, in its time on the market it’s become a staple [...]

Many things tend to deter us from participating in political rallies. There’s the risk of violence, of course, though we rarely really have to worry about that. There’s the general sense that mass movements of people down city streets can’t achieve much anymore – signing online petitions, that’s where it’s at. Additionally, we’re just not [...]

Our rebellions actions as kids were never quite as high-profile or bad-ass as car theft or driving dangerously. Of course, nowadays we could probably pass such things off as some kind of displaced and confused environmental activism, but that doesn’t seem to work for the youthful offenders in BuzzFeed’s listicle of 10 Kids Stealing Cars. [...]

President Obama is planning to make a speech especially to public school students around the nation on Tuesday and, per the Times, some Republican parents don’t want their kids brainwashed by the socialist propaganda of their elected leader. All parents are notoriously evil and unjust, as we all well know, so this should come as [...]

We often have a hard time articulating why we might be bad parents, but usually a visual explanation is much more effective. Imagining ourselves as parents calls to mind some of the unfortunate up-bringers (and their even more unfortunate charges) featured in Banned In Hollywood’s listicle of Funny Photos of 20 Terrible Parents (which is [...]

As kids we had some killer cool lunch boxes. There was a Batman one for a little while in 5th grade that was totally hot. A couple years before we’d asserted our lunch box cool with a flashy red Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles number, but we eventually lost touch with our fans when we sported [...]