Nathan Pensky
MEL Magazine
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Past articles by Nathan:
The Problematic Past and Enduring Appeal of Dr. Seuss
Brian Jay Jones, author of biography 'Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination,' on the man who shaped your imagination → Read More
Why 'Attack of the Clones' Is the Most Important 'Star Wars' Film
What's the worst 'Star Wars' movie? 'Episode II: Attack of the Clones' was widely panned, but its infamous "sand line" matters way more than fans think. → Read More
Sylvester Stallone's 1987 Arm-Wrestling Film 'Over the Top' Is Still Hollywood's Most Awesome Movie About Divorced Dads
Like a lot of kids with divorced parents, I built up no small amount of mythology around my family. So naturally a movie that trades... → Read More
The Death of the Author: Reflecting on Denis Johnson’s “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden”
Nathan Pensky on the late Denis Johnson's new short story collection. → Read More
Go Set A Watchman is a mixed bag of nostalgia and end-of-childhood awfulness
Harper Lee’s new novel, the much anticipated and much-written about Go Set A Watchman, is a difficult book. A lot of questions still surround it. Is it actually a sequel to Lee’s classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird, or just a curious appendix to that work? Did the writer, who famously vowed never to → Read More
Poverty and the "Just World hypothesis"
There's an idea that gets thrown around in tech circles -- notably in the high-profile rants of Peter Shih and Greg Gopman -- that "poor people" or "homeless people" are "lazy" or they "deserve to ... → Read More
The War Nerd: Google’s Big New Dog
Google has bought eight robotics companies in the past few months, and no one seems to know why. Most of the speculation has focused on one of the eight companies, Boston Dynamics (BD). BD is the o... → Read More
Google, Facebook, and others reveal how many national security requests they receive
Last week, the US government reached an agreement with some of the country's big tech companies to allow them to be more transparent about the nature of the national security requests they receive ... → Read More
Ray Kurzweil is wrong: The Singularity is not near
Technology culture celebrates "the crazy ones," those who expand our understanding of life, who can forge new realities out of their own imagination. Then again, sometimes "the crazy ones" come up ... → Read More
What is a hater?
Conventional Internet wisdom tells us that the Web is a never-ceasing hotbed of negativity, a swirling cesspool of haterism. Don't ever read the comments. Don't feed the trolls. Block and unfollow ... → Read More
Magical thinking in Silicon Valley
In 1962, science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote his Three Laws of Prediction, on how to think about future technologies. The third law is by far the most popularly quoted: “Any sufficiently ... → Read More
The late, great 8-hour workday
Startup founders have been known to talk about “entrepreneurship as a lifestyle.” Long hours, bad food, poor job security – these are bragging rights among many tech founders. They’re building some... → Read More
Whatever works: A wife's tragedy and an instructive moment for online journalists
Here at the dawn of the Digital Era, many issues remain up for debate. Appropriately, most of these debates are happening on or around the Internet, and unsurprisingly, few of them show signs of be... → Read More