Daniel Rourke /stream

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In a New Yorker essay a few weeks back, Laura Miller considered the various ways in which science fiction writers have imagined aliens, from the 18th century through today. Perhaps inevitably,…

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This two-story brick building is nothing special, even a bit decrepit, but as you walk up its crooked metal staircase toward the second floor, you will find the first hint that…

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We have met our match at the genteel pastime of jigsaw puzzles. It seems an algorithm can now whiz through 10,000 pieces in 24 hours. The speedy solver could also help…

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The internet finally seems to have made a dint in New York's institutional art world. Cory Arcangel, an artist who began his career manipulating old computer technologies and critiquing web culture,…

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From 1961 to 1973, a loosely organized group of artists and scientists coalesced around the radical idea that the emerging technology of the computer could be used to make a different…

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Dr. Munshi-South has joined the ranks of a small but growing number of field biologists who study urban evolution — not the rise and fall of skyscrapers and neighborhoods, but the…

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Who is the common reader now? I do not think there is any way to evade a simple answer to this question. Common readers—which is to say the great majority of…

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The number of serial murders seems to be dwindling, as does the public's fascination with them. "It does seem the golden age of serial murderers is probably past," says Harold Schechter,…

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There’s something about Jonathan Safran Foer that drives a certain breed of dyspeptic New York writer/blogger to drink—more so than usual, anyway. They chafe at the six-figure advances, the visiting professor…

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Just a quick fyi: If you head over to the Harvard University Press web site, you can grab a free copy of Marcus Boon’s new book, In Praise of Copying, which…

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The upside-down values of the art world, popularly infamous, ridiculed, and resented, are by now the mark of the sphere itself, sufficient to establish the cynic’s principle that if you wish…

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Video games have come a very long way since the 1980s... As Tom Bissell, a journalist, former Salon writer and lifelong gamer, explains in his new book, "Extra Lives: Why Video…

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WHEREVER their investigations lead, all analysts of religion begin somewhere. And in the final lines of his densely but skilfully packed account of faith from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, Nicholas…

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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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In a New Yorker essay a few weeks back, Laura Miller considered the various ways in which science fiction writers have imagined aliens, from the 18th century through today. Perhaps inevitably,…

Bookmark

We have met our match at the genteel pastime of jigsaw puzzles. It seems an algorithm can now whiz through 10,000 pieces in 24 hours. The speedy solver could also help…

Bookmark

The internet finally seems to have made a dint in New York's institutional art world. Cory Arcangel, an artist who began his career manipulating old computer technologies and critiquing web culture,…

Bookmark

Dr. Munshi-South has joined the ranks of a small but growing number of field biologists who study urban evolution — not the rise and fall of skyscrapers and neighborhoods, but the…

Bookmark

The number of serial murders seems to be dwindling, as does the public's fascination with them. "It does seem the golden age of serial murderers is probably past," says Harold Schechter,…

Bookmark

There’s something about Jonathan Safran Foer that drives a certain breed of dyspeptic New York writer/blogger to drink—more so than usual, anyway. They chafe at the six-figure advances, the visiting professor…

Bookmark

Just a quick fyi: If you head over to the Harvard University Press web site, you can grab a free copy of Marcus Boon’s new book, In Praise of Copying, which…

Bookmark

The upside-down values of the art world, popularly infamous, ridiculed, and resented, are by now the mark of the sphere itself, sufficient to establish the cynic’s principle that if you wish…

Bookmark

Earlier this week, the New York Times company forced the iPad Pulse News Reader app to be pulled from the App Store. The reason? It took the Times’ RSS feed and…

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WHEREVER their investigations lead, all analysts of religion begin somewhere. And in the final lines of his densely but skilfully packed account of faith from the viewpoint of evolutionary biology, Nicholas…

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…