‘If you want to impress me baby here’s my plan’

“That hair of a dog is howling, ‘hey there man!” is the lyric of the weekend. Happy Labor Day.

‘Is the current American understanding of deadly force the only option?’

How countries with a less, shall we say, truculent national guns right organization handle criminal violence. This story doesn’t condescend in the usual ways. A criminology professor: ThinkProgress asked Newburn how British cops handle suspects who, for example, were carrying a knife like Powell. “There are a number of things that might happen,” he said.

Singles 8/29

The freshest track on Future’s Honest gets an airing, as does a Stevie Nicks composition written during the Rumours salad days. Also: the continued decline of T.I., better suited these days as a label scion. Romeo Santos’ “Eres Mia” isn’t as crisp as last year’s “Propuesta Indecente” but as sun-kissed romantic pop — Sade for

Mary Beard: “still a major current of misogyny in Western culture”

A historian whose popular pedigree is impeccable in England, Mary Beard has made it a practice of fighting received notions about female discourse in academe. She responds to trolling students on Twitter. By all accounts she deflates them with politeness: listening to complaints, answering them in measured tones. A lively profile explains: The targeting of

The state of health care, Florida edition

In Florida, where Governor Rick Scott repeats “jobs, jobs, jobs” often enough to wonder if it was the first and last English word he learned, the state-run website dedicated to sign the uninsured with crapulent health care has shown splendid results: Six months after the launch of the state’s effort, called Florida Health Choices, just

Autumnal bliss: Le Week-end

Visiting Mom’s this weekend, you’ll find a Redbox copy of Le Week-end on the table. With Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a philosophy professor and teacher, respectively, who celebrate their thirtieth anniversary in Paris, it looks like a sop to the The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel matinee crowd. Don’t skip it. Although marred by

Bodies, rest, and motion: Whit Stillman

To praise Whit Stillman as “a cinematic master of bodies at rest” is as cute as praising David Crosby as the rock and roll chronicler of sixties excess, but otherwise Richard Brody’s review of the writer-director’s pilot for “The Cosmopolitans” is accurate about the strengths: For Stillman, parties are laboratories where possibilities arise suddenly from

It’s Charlie

Here we go! Heading into Tuesday’s primary election, Charlie Crist’s win over longtime Democrat Nan Rich was never in doubt. Only the size of his double-digit win — about 50 percentage points — was in question. The general election pitting Crist against Gov. Rick Scott is far less certain. It’s close to a tie race.

‘I’ve grown beyond using my own experiences’

Sinead O’Connor, promoting the sold I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, discusses the sources of her craft. Does that change the way you sing some of your older material? Do you see a younger version of yourself as a character to play? The way I’ve been trained as a singer is a method called bel

Make it rain: Ariana Grande, Brad Paisley

Ariana Grande – My Everything She can sing, possessing a voice with a sweet high end and dark chalky tones at the bottom like a hot cup of Earl Grey, but she hasn’t evinced much shrewdness for collaborators or hook writers. If “Problem” sounded OK after the hundredth time, credit the disparate pieces that the

Michael Brown and the ‘angelic standard’

I think of some of my students’ stories and of incidents in my own life and wonder how many readers use Michael Brown’s biography as a mirror: I had my first drink when I was 11. I once brawled in the cafeteria after getting hit in the head with a steel trash can. In my

Abuse of Weakness

In a career spent playing self-contained women with a touch of sullenness, Isabelle Huppert chose a role that I might expect if she’d agreed to be the subject of a celebrity roast. As Maud Schoenberg, a director paralyzed on the left side after a sudden stroke in Abuse of Wakness, Huppert yields not an inch