Daniel Rourke /stream

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One of the most beautiful aspects of the genetic code is its simplicity: three letters of DNA combine in 64 different ways, easily spelled out in a handy table, to encode…

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Signage—the kind we see on city streets, in airports, on highways, in hospital corridors—is the most useful thing we pay no attention to. When it works well, it tells us where…

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844), a prototypical nerd with few social graces and no head for business turns a watchmaker’s shop into an artist’s studio…

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What prevents Bohlen-Pierce from becoming unpleasant, dissonant noise is the fact that is not merely an avant-garde musician taking a hacksaw to our current musical system for sheer destructive glee. In…

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By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a "logical two dimensional picture." A…

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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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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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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…

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Another binary myth fundamental to Western culture is the eternally popular hubris/nemesis complex. According to this idea, those who transgress against the natural order always get their just desserts. Hubris is…

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There's a reason why we find it easier to "get" modern art than avant-garde music, and it's not just about our natural conservatism and love of Mozart... Arts & books Who’s…

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Technology so pervades our culture that it's sobering to consider how poorly we understand it. How do new tools and techniques arise? What principles guide their evolution? And how does their…

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So, here it is, the final list that I am sending to Professor Dan Dennett, who will select the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize winners: (in alphabetical order by blog name)…

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“When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word of what someone says, he or she states that it’s ‘Greek to me’. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it ’sounds like…

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This is a remarkably uninformed article about what effect a huge nuclear war would have upon the human race. The author seems to think that the radiation would create a race…

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One of the most beautiful aspects of the genetic code is its simplicity: three letters of DNA combine in 64 different ways, easily spelled out in a handy table, to encode…

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Signage—the kind we see on city streets, in airports, on highways, in hospital corridors—is the most useful thing we pay no attention to. When it works well, it tells us where…

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This layered process of figuring out what someone else is thinking — of mind reading — is both a common literary device and an essential survival skill. Why human beings are…

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In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844), a prototypical nerd with few social graces and no head for business turns a watchmaker’s shop into an artist’s studio…

Bookmark

By drawing a diagram, a ground plan of a house, a street plan to the location of a site, or a topographic map, one draws a "logical two dimensional picture." A…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

Another binary myth fundamental to Western culture is the eternally popular hubris/nemesis complex. According to this idea, those who transgress against the natural order always get their just desserts. Hubris is…

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Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What,…

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Technology so pervades our culture that it's sobering to consider how poorly we understand it. How do new tools and techniques arise? What principles guide their evolution? And how does their…

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So, here it is, the final list that I am sending to Professor Dan Dennett, who will select the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize winners: (in alphabetical order by blog name)…

Bookmark

“When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word of what someone says, he or she states that it’s ‘Greek to me’. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it ’sounds like…

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Six experts discuss the merits of framing climate change, the language that troubles them, and the inherent bias of any chosen word. In a report to be released the first week…