Writer, Editor, Investigative Journalist
In a town where exposure is everything, bite-size videos from Instagram and the even shorter Vine prove popular and even profitable. Enjoy whirlwind tours of Los Angeles neighborhoods, eavesdrop on celebrities, drive interest in your in-progress screenplay. Just when you thought this town's attention span couldn't get any shorter ? or its … Continue »
First thing to know about soldering irons: they're hot. If that doesn't frighten you away, you might have what it takes to wire up the circuit board that will take you on an electronic treasure hunt through Santa Monica's GLOW event. During a class at the newly rejiggered 1450 Ocean community center in Santa Monica's Camera Obscura building, … Continue »
Burning Man's reputation for bacchanalian revelry is well deserved. The festival is one of the planet's biggest parties, famously crescendoing in the immolation of a towering wooden stick figure on Saturday night, accompanied by a chaotic, high-firepower pyrotechnics display that, unlike most fireworks shows, feels all grand finale, all of the … Continue »
There's no running water, no plumbing, no electrical outlets. The environment is so forbidding in this vast and dusty desert that there aren't even insects. So it's not the kind of place to expect full bars on your smartphone. Of course, that's a big part of the charm. The only thing not lacking in Black Rock City, Nev. ? the temporary city … Continue »
All the trappings of city life are within arm?s reach in Busan: both high- and low-end shopping at Nampodong (Busan lays claim to the world?s largest department store, Shinsegae Centum City), K-pop concerts at Haeundae Beach, and Seomyeon Med- ical Street, a district comprising 160 cosmetic and medical clinics, where one can pop in for Botox and … Continue »
I slide three shiny red jelly beans together. Trumpet blast. I put three lemon drops in a line. A xylophone sounds a jingle of approval. Then I get five purple jujubes in a row, and they snap into a single, multicolored, disco-ball-looking nonpareil equipped with deadly lasers. An authoritative baritone tells me that I'm "tasty," or better yet, … Continue »
In her early twenties, Katherine Connor had a successful career as the merchandising manager for a Gap store in a fashionable part of London. She spent her income on clothing and accessories, bought her own house, got engaged, and enjoyed time with her career-girl friends. But something didn?t feel right. So in 2002, she quit her job, sold her … Continue »
Despite the chicken-in-every-pot hype over consumer-level 3-D printers, the technology still has a long way to go to be usable, or useful, for the average Joe. Designing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional computer screen is no simple task, especially for those unskilled in computer-assisted design or software. And for most people, … Continue »