Fashion dictator Diana Vreeland summed it up this way: “The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb.”

There is no monolithic market. We are a nation of niches.

If your goal is to get potential buyers to identify with your brand, you must vary your representation of beyond the vanilla and generic in your advertising. 

Painter Jackson Pollock, dubbed “Jack the Dripper” by Time magazine, was both admired and influential, but did he work for the CIA?

Not exactly. However, the CIA did use abstract expressionism as part of Cold War propaganda aimed at the Soviet Union. In the ‘50s, American critics were encouraged to contrast the “freedom of expression” represented by Pollock’s work with the grim social realism associated with the European art scene. The political goal was to promote a cultural shift, making New York, not Paris, the epicenter of the art world. 

There may be nothing new under the Sun, but an adventure planned for this summer may reveal new things about the planet itself.

Sometime between July 31 and August 19, a Delta IV-Heavy launch vehicle will make a night launch from Kennedy Space Center. It will carry the Parker Solar Probe, years in the making.

Awareness of hygge started as a soft whisper in 2015. 

By 2016, the world took the Danish concept of deep comfort and contentment in simple moments and hugged it to its heart. Hygge how-to books hit the bestseller lists and Pinterest boards filled up with ahh-some images of steaming mugs of cocoa, slippers, napping kittens, and couples by the fire, cocooned in blankets.

The Line Between Humans and Animals

Never underestimate the imagination of an emo teen.

Mary Shelley was just 18 when she started to write Frankenstein, arguable the first sci-fi novel and unquestionably more relevant today, when technology has made the imaginings of 1818 all too possible. 

We can redefine life. Artificial intelligence, augmented realities, gene editing, and bionic organs are no longer the stuff of fantasy.

Many of the most intriguing, controversial, inspiring and fear-inducing trends can be lumped together under one big idea: transhumanism. 

How can we – or should we – transcend our human limitations?

It is the season to admire art in an unlikely medium: eggs.  People around the world have been decorating Easter eggs for generations.   

At the end of the 1800s, a New Jersey druggist created a commercial Easter egg dye. Still in business today, PAAS offers more than 20 products. (The company takes its name from the Pennsylvania Dutch word passen, meaning Easter.) PAAS reports they sell more than 10 million egg  color kits a year – enough to dye 180 million eggs.

The original Rosie died last month, but a woman’s work is never done. 

A factory photograph of Naomi Parker Fraley, who died in January, was reportedly the model for Rosie the Riveter, an image as popular today as it was in World War II.  (Beyoncé even copped a Rosie pose in 2014.)

The woman with the bandana and determined expression, sleeves rolled up and arm flexed, appeared under the heading “We Can Do It,”  The poster was created for Westinghouse in 1942, as part of a campaign to boost worker morale. Today the image remains a cultural icon, symbolizing women’s strength, contribution and economic clout.