The Bygone Bureau

Northern Indiana winters are brutal by almost any standard, and even during spring and fall, the thoughts of lake effect snow and thirty-below temperatures aren’t that far off. So we permanent residents try to savor those three months completely untouched by winter’s long shadow...

The Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus) is a slightly smaller variant of the common American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)...

It all started with a relatively innocent grammar lesson: a talk about tentative language, like how to make requests or say “no” without being too direct...

In the Hollywood tradition of doing whatever another studio is doing, two formative picture books from my childhood are coming soon to theaters...

Bill Wasik is a guerilla social scientist. He created the flash mob phenomenon, the blog Stop Peter Bjorn and John, and a fictional character who adores viral ad campaigns named Bill Shiller (get it?)...

In the beginning, the term “intellectual” — which first appeared to describe Dreyfusard writers in the 1890s — was a catch-all that described just about anyone who engaged in public debate and discussion in order to influence political opinion, for the sake of political allegiance, or in...

I can’t help but sound like a Holden Caulfied-esque liar when I talk about Mr. Thomas. He taught my physics class during my senior year of high school, and he had one leg. He lost the other years earlier when he crashed one of his Jaguar racing cars...

Sony Online Entertainment’s Free Realms takes the essentials of online role-playing games and tries to make them accessible to the whole family...

“Here you go,” a colleague said the other day as he handed me Pedro Juan Gutierrez’s Dirty Havana Trilogy...

Brendon Chung’s Gravity Bone may be the best videogame you’ve never played. (PC users can download and play through it before reading on—it’s quick.) By traditional metrics of what makes a game good — graphics, sound, length, “replayability” — Gravity Bone would score pretty low...

Growing up, it always seemed to me that video games had a rather notorious reputation in mainstream news...

This is a series about ideas and concepts: ones that influence our thoughts, our lives, and our world. Because the words whose meanings we think we know the best are often the ones that make the least sense. Growing up, I learned a lot about success...

The Italians are back. As I climb aboard the Airport Express bus in downtown Oslo at 6:05 a.m. to make my morning flight back to London, I hear that familiar Romance tongue and see elaborately spiked black hair poking up above the tops of the seats. Unbelievable...

Yes, Tony Judt’s Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 is a behemoth, all 935 pages and 1.8 pounds of it. But really, would you trust someone to examine Europe, 1945-2005, with any less of a book...

I hear very little French standing in an exhaustingly long line to get into the Louvre, free the first Sunday of the month...

A grown man, let’s call him Charles, stands in front of a table. Three other adults sit behind the table. They’ve just eaten a meal cooked by Charles. These adults tell Charles that his pork tenderloin is too salty. He knows he’s on national television, but still Charles begins to cry...

Four Famous Writers Born with Tails: An Interview with Tobias H. Cromley of the American Deformities Institute  William Shakespeare “Oh yes, Shakespeare almost certainly had a tail...

Thanks to everyone who came out to The Bygone Bureau Party last week to help us celebrate our Best Blog victory from this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Web Awards...

Kuwait is not exactly a tourism hotspot. As one taxi driver told me, everyone in the country is there to work, not to enjoy him- or herself...

The internet’s role as ombudsman, or simply watchdog, has been important in the U.S.—identifying everything from murder charges to political incompetence...

As a musician who has consistently produced great records through the aught decade, John Vanderslice understands music in the Information Age. He’s built a loyal fan base by promoting himself on blogs and touring constantly...

I‘ve been thinking back more and more about Nicholas Kulish’s article in The New York Times, which discusses the phenomenon of German Ordnung (basically translated as “order,” although its meaning is much more far-reaching)...

“The Part About the Crimes” is widely lauded as the centerpiece of 2666. In a review of the book for The New York Times , Jonathan Lethem praised 2666’s fourth section for its unliterary aspirations (he also makes a pretty apt comparison to Haruki Murakmi’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicles)...

During my first tube journey into Central London back in February, I was caught unaware by the sudden appearance of Wembley Stadium, rising enormous above its one-and-two-story surroundings in residential Northwest London...

If you’d like to tell us what book you’re reading, album you’re listening to, YouTube video you’re watching, or whatever, drop us a roughly 250-word line at letters@bygonebureau.com...

I want you to boycott Xiu Xiu. And you, the reader, are most likely thinking, “Great. Another asshole complaining about dissonance in pop music, or about the shocking content of Jamie Stewart’s lyrics.” For the record, I love dissonance in pop music. I love dissonance outside of pop music...

That morning, I woke up with ants in my sleeping bag. Sweaty from long underwear intended to keep the ant bites at bay, I rolled over just as my tent-mate Kendall began to open her eyes. “I’m glad today’s the last day,” I said, smashing an ant. “Me too,” she yawned...

Writing these articles often reminds me of the pig fetus I dissected in the tenth grade. I cut it open, tried to differentiate one thing from another, and then pulled each piece out, one at a time, for closer inspection. “Now find the bladder. Can you see what the bladder is connected to...

I talked with guitarist Pat Flegel and bassist Matt Flegel of Women before their show at Seattle venue Chop Suey. The band is from Calgary, and was touring with Chad VanGaalen, who had also produced their recent self-titled record. Women performing at Chop Suey; courtesy of Steve Louie...

In the 100-degree heat and suffocating humidity of the Emirati summer, construction is prohibited by law between 12:30 and 3 p.m.—a government-mandated “heat break.” So every day at 3 p.m., the evening shift, hundreds of thousands strong, rolls into the myriad construction sites around the...

I was just eight years old at the time, but I still remember being shocked that Calvin and Hobbes was ending. It shocked everyone who loved the strip. Watterson hadn’t lost his touch, and ten years was young for a popular newspaper daily. Why would a clearly passionate artist hang up his pen...

Imagine a man having sex with a man. Now imagine a man in a dress. Which one made you less comfortable? After studying Queer Cinema in class, I’ve been thinking about how audiences view gays and lesbians in movies, which portrayals straight people are comfortable seeing and which make them squirm...