Justin Peters

These days poker–specifically Texas hold ’em, the best version of the venerable game–is enjoying an unexpected renaissance among Americans in general, and twenty-somethings in particular. It is newly ubiquitous on television: The World Series of Poker, a single event which took place last May, is replayed on ESPN with obsessive frequency 10 months after it […]

This was my first real foray into the world of super-violent computer games. Overprotective parents had restricted my childhood game consumption to innocuous titles like “Math Blaster” and “Wheel of Fortune: The Electronic Version.” I had surreptitiously played games like “Doom” at friends’ houses, but had never had the opportunity to become obsessed. In the […]

When Dutch prince William of Orange ascended the English throne in 1689 in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, one of his first official acts was to join the League of Augsburg’s war on France. As a wartime measure, William banned the import of French products, including cheese, bad manners, and brandy. Brandy was extremely […]

In 1991, Hamburg was an aide to Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and a wonk obsessed with the JFK assassination. Following the release of Stone’s film JFK that same year, there was a public clamor to open the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and Hamilton, prodded by his young aide, was at its […]

This was my introduction to eBay, the wildly successful online auction service that gives new meaning to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” In the market for a talking necktie, a porcelain pig, or a beer helmet? Odds are that a brief search will yield what you’re seeking. But far from being […]

Sour grapes aside, Kasparov’s defeat, to many people, seemed like just another way in which human achievement was being overtaken by cool mechanical efficiency. Yet few people realized that this sense of electronic ennui had its antecedent 200 years prior, when a chess-playing robot known as “the Turk” confounded observers throughout Europe and America. In […]