Daniel Rourke /stream

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Some animals can instinctively solve navigational problems that have baffled humans for centuries. Now, researchers are uncovering how. The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000 neurons,…

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If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454…

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The story of Google’s algorithm begins with PageRank, the system invented in 1997 by cofounder Larry Page while he was a grad student at Stanford. Page’s now legendary insight was to…

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Though Gutenberg's invention made possible our modern world with all its wonders and woes, no one, much less Gutenberg himself, could have foreseen that his press would have this effect. And…

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"'To read what was never written.' Such reading is the most ancient: reading before all languages, from the entrails, the stars, or dances. Later the mediating link of a new kind…

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Manipulating Reality presents a selection of 23 artistic approaches that work through photography and video to develop possible models of reality. Its aim is not to understand whether photographs can convey…

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In early 2002, the filmmaker Grace Guggenheim--the daughter of the late Charles Guggenheim, one of America’s greatest documentarians, and the sister of the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who made An Inconvenient Truth-decided…

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When, one evening in 1976, Philip K. Dick invited Tim Powers to his Fullerton apartment, the Cal State student expected the kind of night he often passed with the science-fiction titan:…

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Ray Brassier – My stance is not particularly original: it’s indebted to the work of several more genuinely original philosophers. The confluence of their influence in my thinking represents my attempt…

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My mild-mannered English husband Adam lives quite a colorful existence in his dreams. Having benefited from hours of delight at his dead of night musings, I thought it was only fair…

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Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and…

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It seems significant, somehow, that Infinite Jest—the big buzzy signature meganovel of the nineties—was set at the end of the aughts. Most of the book’s action appears to take place in…

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Theology lets us talk about deep and irrational urges. This is seen by some atheists as weakness. But maybe it's a strength as well James Wood, a writer who himself has…

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by Bertolt Brecht In our society one can invent and perfect discoveries that still have to conquer their market and justify their existence; in other words discoveries that have not been…

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Among the defining attributes of now are ever tinier gadgets, ever shorter attention spans, and the privileging of marketplace values above all. Life is manically parceled into financial quarters, three-minute YouTube…

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The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout thinks future generations will consider itunes, youtube, and Kindle a more important cultural development than anything it distributes. He’s right to point out the huge…

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Some animals can instinctively solve navigational problems that have baffled humans for centuries. Now, researchers are uncovering how. The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000 neurons,…

Bookmark

If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454…

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Though Gutenberg's invention made possible our modern world with all its wonders and woes, no one, much less Gutenberg himself, could have foreseen that his press would have this effect. And…

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Every age has its potential regulator, its threat to liberty. Our founders feared a newly empowered federal government; the Constitution is written against that fear. John Stuart Mill worried about the…

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Manipulating Reality presents a selection of 23 artistic approaches that work through photography and video to develop possible models of reality. Its aim is not to understand whether photographs can convey…

Bookmark

In early 2002, the filmmaker Grace Guggenheim--the daughter of the late Charles Guggenheim, one of America’s greatest documentarians, and the sister of the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, who made An Inconvenient Truth-decided…

Bookmark

Ray Brassier – My stance is not particularly original: it’s indebted to the work of several more genuinely original philosophers. The confluence of their influence in my thinking represents my attempt…

Bookmark

Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and…

Bookmark

It seems significant, somehow, that Infinite Jest—the big buzzy signature meganovel of the nineties—was set at the end of the aughts. Most of the book’s action appears to take place in…

Bookmark

Theology lets us talk about deep and irrational urges. This is seen by some atheists as weakness. But maybe it's a strength as well James Wood, a writer who himself has…

Bookmark

Among the defining attributes of now are ever tinier gadgets, ever shorter attention spans, and the privileging of marketplace values above all. Life is manically parceled into financial quarters, three-minute YouTube…

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In April 1965, a young researcher named Gordon Moore wrote a short article for the now-defunct Electronics Magazine pointing out that each year, the number of transistors that could be economically…