Daniel Rourke /stream

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It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the works…

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The notion of SHEARING LAYERS is one of the centerpieces of Brand's How Buildings Learn [Brand 1994]. Brand, in turn synthesized his ideas from a variety of sources, including British designer…

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It used to be so simple. A book had an author; a film, a screenwriter and director; a piece of music, a composer and performer; a painting or sculpture, an artist;…

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The question is pretty simple: in the not-too-distant future you and I will have had our entire genomes sequenced (except perhaps those of you in California) - so how much hard…

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Late last year, a lavish and limited-edition volume was published to honor a masterpiece that never was and never will be: Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon. At 2,974 pages and 23.8 pounds, it…

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In the beginning was the Word. Then came Gutenberg, and it was good. But then came a giddy army of Japanese school girls, writing and “publishing" novels on cell phones. And…

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In 2006 Stacy Snyder, a 25-year-old student at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, was denied a teaching degree just days before graduation. University officials had discovered a photo of her, captioned “Drunken…

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Want to know what life will look like on other planets? Look no farther than these five creatures, who are already prepared for life on Saturn's moon Titan - or in…

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As ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano continued to keep European airspace shut down over the weekend, affecting millions of travelers around the world, some government agencies and airlines clashed over the…

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In 1972 NASA sent into deep space an interstellar probe called Pioneer 10. It bore a golden plaque. The art historian Ernst Gombrich offers an insightful commentary on this: The National…

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Selected by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan, these songs were etched into a 12-inch, gold-plated copper record that was placed aboard the two spaceships in 1977

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In a meeting today in Sacramento, commissioners might vote to register items left behind on the moon by Apollo astronauts "as an official State Historical Resource," the L.A. Times reports. After…

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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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It is an internet radio, a cyberspace shuttle, and a kind of archive. LMB takes you on a journey through an almost forgotten web that is loud, colorful, often "personal", and…

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A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural…

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Pick up a 30-year-old astronomy textbook and you will find more illustrations of planets than actual pictures; Pluto still holds onto its full planet status and exoplanets are theoretical. In the…

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It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the works…

Bookmark

The notion of SHEARING LAYERS is one of the centerpieces of Brand's How Buildings Learn [Brand 1994]. Brand, in turn synthesized his ideas from a variety of sources, including British designer…

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As digital screens proliferate and people move from print to pixel, how will the act of reading change? America was founded on the written word. Its roots spring from documents—the Constitution,…

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The question is pretty simple: in the not-too-distant future you and I will have had our entire genomes sequenced (except perhaps those of you in California) - so how much hard…

Bookmark

In the beginning was the Word. Then came Gutenberg, and it was good. But then came a giddy army of Japanese school girls, writing and “publishing" novels on cell phones. And…

Bookmark

Look closely at what you're reading right now. See those little spaces between the words? They may look unimportant, but the invention of word spaces, back in the Middle Ages, changed…

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Want to know what life will look like on other planets? Look no farther than these five creatures, who are already prepared for life on Saturn's moon Titan - or in…

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In 1972 NASA sent into deep space an interstellar probe called Pioneer 10. It bore a golden plaque. The art historian Ernst Gombrich offers an insightful commentary on this: The National…

Bookmark

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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In a meeting today in Sacramento, commissioners might vote to register items left behind on the moon by Apollo astronauts "as an official State Historical Resource," the L.A. Times reports. After…

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…

Bookmark

It is an internet radio, a cyberspace shuttle, and a kind of archive. LMB takes you on a journey through an almost forgotten web that is loud, colorful, often "personal", and…

Bookmark

SYNAESTHESIA is a neurological condition in which there is a merging of the senses, so that activity in one sensory modality elicits sensations in another. Although first described by Francis Galton…

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A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural…

Bookmark

Pick up a 30-year-old astronomy textbook and you will find more illustrations of planets than actual pictures; Pluto still holds onto its full planet status and exoplanets are theoretical. In the…