Hugh Ryan

Freelance writer

Who Says Machines Must Be Useful?

First published in The New York Times on January 6, 2012. Read the original (with videos!) here.
ON the roof of a small row house in Brooklyn, a black powder fuse flared brightly against the gray sky. Hissing and sparking, it burned through a platform installed inside a repurposed Ikea bookshelf, sending four [...]

Schmekel, a Band Born as a Laugh

First published in The New York Times on November 25, 2011. Read the original here.
THE basement auditorium of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side is a sincere space. Big, brown and bare, it suggests a school gym, a place for officially sanctioned fun — which made a recent concert by [...]

How to do Astrology

First published on The Morning News on October 20, 2010. Read the original with comments here.
“I’m not at all psychic. Any astrologer who says they’re psychic you must run away from, because it means they don’t want to do the math.”
This is one of the first things astrologer and writer Susan Miller says [...]

We Are (From) Everywhere

Originally published on Advocate.com on 8/25/2009. You can read the original, with comments, here.
At 28, Nathan Manske might be a poster child for fun employment. Tan, attractive, articulate, and recently laid off by a large advertising firm, Manske has spent the last six months channeling all of his energies into creating and maintaining the website [...]

Pixelated Pride

Published in The Advocate, 6/10/2009. Read the original (w/ comments) here.
When most people think about online video games, they think of teenage boys and Angelina Jolie dressed as Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. But a growing number of LGBT adults are taking to the (virtual) streets, carving out a home for themselves in what are [...]

Three Questions for a Teacher and a Father

This profile, done through the StoryCorps project, followed a young man named Nick as he traced the history of his name, discovered his biological father was not the man he thought, and confronted his birth father. It was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition. It aired on June 29, 2007. Listen to it here.

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