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Rich People Won’t Eat It A friend told me a story about a woman with limited English proficiency who makes and sells tamales. She did not understand when customers asked her if the tamales were gluten free, so she asked her daughter what gluten free meant. The daughter said, “That’s something rich people won’t eat.”

On Limits (May 2016)

Playing Violent Games in Peace In his recent article, “ISIS’s Call of Duty,” Jay Caspian Kang describes similarities between ISIS recruitment films and first-person-shooter games – similarities that are likely intentional (The New Yorker, September 18, 2014). Kang’s article is one of many that play into a larger debate about the role of violent videogames and other violent media in our culture. This debate has continued unresolved for decades, and both sides often succumb to strong emotions and hyperbolic statements. I feel this leads to a shutdown in communication between groups, and that is the issue I would like to address in this article.

On Temptation (November 2014)