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Macho Mayor: Why Carlos Alvarez’s Return Is So Typically Miami

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What do you see when you gaze into the rippling, babbling, lush-and-beefy orange pectoral muscles of Carlos Alvarez? Earlier this week, when Miami New Times broke the story of his participation (and victory!) in a bodybuilding competition last November, I was hypnotized by the former, infamously recalled mayor of Miami-Dade County and his Herculean torso. [...]

The Great Gatsby? Jay-Z Already Watched That Throne

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Earlier this year, Baz Luhrman released a trailer for The Great Gatsby that started off with Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” With the wild being capitalism, and the no church being the way tons of money allows the 1 percent to believe they transcend god, the song’s pairing with the film seemed appropriate. Unfortunately, the [...]

Here’s Hoping “American Reader” Editor Uzoamaka Maduka Is Right

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Uzoamaka Maduka has a theory: Counter to many people’s assumptions, young people do think. They read, write, argue, analyze, and debate. In fact, they are willing and able to contribute to the cultural discourse in society! Being part of the digital generation doesn’t mean their collective attention span is stretched by things more complex than LOLcats. [...]

Reviewing Daniel Menaker’s Review of ‘Free Will’

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What you are now reading is a review of a review of Sam Harris’s brief new treatise against free will, Free Will. I haven’t read the treatise myself, because I don’t like to read things that tell me what I already know, and I’ve known since early adolescence that free will is nonsense. (You may, science and common [...]

Review: Rosie Dastgir’s ‘A Small Fortune’ Is a Delightful, Often Funny Tale of East Meets West

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It is no small feat for an author to capture world issues from a personal point of view. Sure, many try – and authors like Khaled Hosseini succeed – but often these novels fail to tell a story. Instead they serve as a platform for writers to express their political views. Theoretically there is nothing [...]

As a Quarter-Billionaire, It’s Pretty Convenient for Mitt Romney to Believe in Free Will

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The upcoming battle between Republicans and Democrats has been framed a thousand different ways: as a fight between rich and poor, capitalism and socialism, nostalgia and progressivism, Christianity and secularism. And each is true in a limited way. But listening to Mitt Romney’s victory speech in New Hampshire last week, after he swept a five-state [...]

Leif GW Persson Does Crime Fiction Right, Unlike Stieg Larsson

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Quick — name a Swedish international bestselling author of an intense and addictive trilogy of thrillers. Stieg Larsson? No. Leif GW Persson? Yes. In contrast to my regard for Persson, who just released the second novel in his trilogy (the third has not yet hit the bookstores), I would never classify Larsson as a writer of [...]

Danation: An Apple a Day … Keeps Thousands of Chinese Workers Oppressed by a Megacorporation

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Maybe it’s Apple’s fault for having such a sunshiny image in the first place. It’s not as though Foxconn, the Chinese company that has made headlines over the last several years for horrifying working conditions, only makes Apple products. Sure, the company manufactures iPads and iPhones. But it also assembles Amazon’s Kindle, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, [...]

Mad Men Is Back, and Oh, How We’ve Missed the Glorious Bastards

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My expectations were low. Mad Men creator Matt Wiener has always let his characters find their own way, which often leads them in a direction that the audience knows is wrong. It’s part of the show’s genius, but it also frustrates a viewer who wants the best for these beloved-but-flawed characters. Incredibly, last night’s long-pined-for [...]