Portside

One explanation of why do many celebrities are Scientologists is hidden in plain sight: The way the cult mirrors the star-obsessed, profit-driven culture of Hollywood. "Going Clear" also posits the rest of the answer: Stars stick with Scientology because of the meticulously kept notes, recordings and videos from E-meter "auditing" sessions that are central to the religion's practice, and make for ideal blackmail material.

Tech world leaders from Microsoft, Google, Pay-Pal invest in lab meat production.

Soumission, Michel Houellebecq's novel about a Muslim party's takeover of France, is "a melancholy tribute to the pleasure of surrender." It's 2022, the National Front is set to win the presidency, so the Socialist and Gaullist parties bloc so that a charismatic centrist Islamist politician wins instead. Whether or not France deserves a moderate Islamist state, "it has found in Houllebeque a sly and witty chronicler..." An English version will appear in September.

Repression visited on social movements by conservative ruling elites has always been accompanied by a heavy dose of paranoia on the part of both the upper classes and their supporters. Adam Zamoyski has written a new history of this phenomenon, showing how it was a staple of early 19th Century European politics. In this review, Andrew Benedict-Nelson takes a look at this entertaining and intriguing story.

"Ida" swept the European awards and finally won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Its director, Pawel Pawlikovski, resorted to an aesthetic of the 60s (Wajda, Godard) not because of mere retro desire, but because the events the film depicts and the resulting emotional impact occurred at the beginning of that decade. Betancourt writes: "Ida", with its aesthetic of loneliness masterfully portrayed in a black and white format, is a "tour de force".

Outlander returns on April 4, 2015 with new episodes to finish out its inaugural season. While it’s difficult to label neatly, there’s much to both enjoy and analyze in the complexity of Outlander, even as that very quality is likely to earn it foes. Its feminine focus and occasionally disconcerting sexual politics may earn it rejection from both sides of the gender discussion—some because it is “too feminist,” others because it’s not feminist enough.

At the 104th anniversary of the Triangle Fire in New York City, poet Tom Karlson reminds us that factory tragedy remains a real issue in the global garment-making industries.

With baseball's opening day this week, Malik Abduh's "Barnstormers" evokes the days when race prejudice barred great athletes from the major leagues.

Scientists know that we have taste receptors for fatty acids in our mouths and intestines. They are studying if fat meets the criteria to qualify as a primary taste along with sweet, salt, sour, bitter and umami.

Coney Island's standing for some 147 years as inspiration for artists, from its inception as an elite seaside resort through its days as an entertainment mecca and leisure refuge for New York's working people, up to its more recent decline and the closing in 2008 of Astroland, its last iconic amusement park.