With Logitech’s axing of its Harmony line, programmable remote controls for home theater seem to have taken a big step back. A cut above conventional remotes, Harmony represented the perfection of the genre: Just download the app or desktop software, enter your system’s components into the program, zap the data…

A long time ago a dear friend gave me a Christmas gift that changed life for the better: my first answerphone. I had had answering machines before, even tapeless ones, but having the answerer built into a phone uncluttered my desk and made life simpler. All good things must come…

The Rev. Elder Troy D. Perry has led an epic American life. The Florida native began preaching at age 15 and worked his way through opposite-sex marriage, parenthood, divorce, ouster from his church, military service, and a suicide attempt before finding his voice as a gay minister and founding the…

In the tradition of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Julia Spencer-Fleming has written a series of novels about a clergy member who moonlights as a sleuth. What sets the Rev. Claire Fergusson apart from the surprising number of other clerical detectives is not so much her gender or Episcopal denomination as…

For a journalist and critic, sleeping with your subjects is a potential conflict of interest, not to mention a monumental act of bad taste. But that’s what I’ve been doing with the OontZ Angle 3 Plus. This little portable speaker is my new bedtime music companion. I was drawn to…

Few songwriters mock money and power as thought-provokingly and entertainingly as Leon Rosselson. The London native has a unique way of balancing outrage with humor. A Rosselsong may approach its subject with a pointed stick, like the one that one-ups the prevalent view of looting (YouTube | Spotify) with unexpected…

Some time ago I paid an internet scammer more than a hundred bucks for disinfectant products that never shipped. In such instances of fraud, credit card companies typically take the side of the customer and refund the money. This case worked out differently — the scammer got the credit card…

Now that I have gone from full-time audio equipment reviewer to semi-retired person, I am at liberty to make choices not available before. When my subwoofer expired of old age and reviewer-abuse syndrome — oh, the beatings it took — I saw this not as a loss but as an…

When I moved to New York City in 1975 Columbus Circle was a pedestrian nightmare. The 2005 redesign has made the southwestern corner of Central Park more pedestrian-friendly but one of Columbus Circle’s chief flaws stubbornly remains — its name. For the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Christopher Columbus has…