All Things Considered

The Truth About JT Leroy

JT LeRoy has been a publishing sensation since his first novel came out in 2000. His stories are described as being autobiographical -- which may be a problem as it becomes clearer that LeRoy is a hoax.

Distracted No More: Going Back to Basics

Commentator Paul Ford has a solution for avoiding the endless distractions a computer provides.

When The Goal Of An Email Is To Stir A Sense Of Dread

Virginia Heffernan and Paul Ford have never met but they have crossed paths, and they've been sending fake work emails to see who most horrifies the other.

Commentary: Be Proud of Guilty Pleasures

Commentator Paul Ford believes that everyone has a guilty pleasure they like to read, watch or listen. He thinks that it's time for people to proudly face up to this, and stop ripping the covers off of their fantasy novels.

Commentary: Obsolescence, the Killer App

For decades, U.S. manufacturing firms have moved factory jobs overseas. Now technology jobs are being sent overseas too. Commentator Paul Ford is struck by the irony that the system built by programmers is the very mechanism that allows these jobs to move overseas.

Commentary: Age of 'X'

If there are any future historians in the audience, commentator Paul Ford has a question for you: what age are we living in?

Commentary: Early Periodicals Go Online

Commentator Paul Ford spends more time than he'd like to admit browsing the "Making of America" website, put up by Cornell University. Recently, he found Herman Melville's "Bartelby the Scriviner," just sitting there halfway down page 546.

Commentary: New York Stories

There's a cliche about how many stories there are in New York. But cliche or not, commentator Paul Ford would like to add a few more.

Commentary: A Theory of Time

Airport waiting areas are often mind-numbing places. The harsh fluorescent lights and not-quite-comfortable chairs aren't exactly conducive to formulating a new theory of time - unless you are commentator Paul Ford.

Commentary: All About Eve, and Other Mothers

Some scientists believe that all of humanity has a common ancestor, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived 150,000 years ago. Commentator Paul Ford thinks she has something in common with his mother.

Commentary: Decoding the Money Puzzle

Commentator Paul Ford makes money as a freelance web consultant. Understanding XML and HTML is easy for him. But understanding the making of money is harder.

Internet as Archive, If You Have the Time

Commentator Paul Ford says that he used to think that the Internet would make everyone a historian -- but he doesn't think so any more.

Commentary: Web Standards

Theoretically, pages on the Web are governed by standards. Commentator Paul Ford makes his living developing Web sites, and he says that if the standards were really standard, it would make his job a lot easier.

Commentary: Software

Late at night, commentator Paul Ford converses with his computer. It promises him power -- if only he will learn the latest version of Photoshop. Then, he falls asleep and dreams in Photoshop, grabbing chunks of his environment and moving them around.

Stealing Identities, and Ideas

Identity theft is becoming commonplace. But commentator Paul Ford says that the identity thief may not be the clever hacker you suspect.

Memory and the Virtual World

Commentator Paul Ford tried to create a virtual world in his head. But it didn't work out very well.

Commentary: The Milt

The Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Penn., was founded as a boarding school for orphans in 1909. Commentator Paul Ford, who attended The Milt during high school, recalls how one day his roommate rebelled openly and bizarrely: He shaved his eyebrows.

Commentary: A Religious Conversion

Commentator Paul Ford spent his life revering his much older brother from afar. But when Greg called to talk about becoming a Catholic, Paul realized he did not want to witness his brother's conversion -- but he went anyway.

Losing My Music, Or When Good Hard Drives Go Bad

For all of his computer skills and love of music, commentator Paul Ford couldn't stay in control of all the music in his collection. When his hard drive crashed recently, he lost 10,000 songs.

Commentary: Tilting for iTunes

Pepsi is running a promotion that if you get a bottle cap with a code, you can download a free song from Apple's iTunes. Commentator Paul Ford says that this kind of subversion of advertising is what the Internet is really great at.

Privacy in Cyberspace: Is It Possible?

Commentator Paul Ford is a computer programmer who has spent a lot of time looking at the ways to keep personal information private on the Internet. He says that privacy is technically possible -- but not very likely.