Divine Revelation And Linguistics A recently discovered inscription dating from 644AD, the oldest ever found in Arabic, isn't much more than graffiti. But it has potentially serious implications for the study of Islam. Why? It all comes down to diacritical marks.

Discovery 11/18/08

email this story | Posted 11/19/08@09:56PM

Ashes To Ashes, Dust To... Paint? Memorializing the dead has always led to some creative thinking, but using ashes to create art? The artist offering the service "paid his way through Philadelphia's Hussian School of Art by working as a gravedigger at a local cemetery." Now, he mixes cremated remains with his paints to create textured paintings for grieving families.

Philadelphia Inquirer 11/19/08

email this story | Posted 11/19/08@06:57AM

'The Chelsea Hotel Of The Mad' Mark Harris looks at the place of Bellevue Hospital in the popular imagination of New York and the country at large - and at how the reality of the hospital and its image relate to and affect each other.

New York 11/16/08

email this story | Posted 11/18/08@09:18PM

To Avert Further Collapse, Build (Beautifully) For The Future "We need to do for the 21st century what FDR did for the twentieth--invest in worn-out highways, our frail electrical grid, our public transit, brittle bridges, and water supplies. ... This late-model WPA would take advantage of a moment when great architecture, buoyed by a long construction boom and debilitated by the bubble's pop, is looking for a purpose."

New York Magazine 11/24/08

email this story | Posted 11/17/08@02:39PM

Caution: Your Digital Camera Has Fingerprints "It turns out that digital cameras leave a telltale fingerprint buried in the pixels of every image they capture. Now forensic scientists can use this fingerprint to tell what camera model was used to take a shot."

New Scientist 11/14/08

email this story | Posted 11/17/08@06:27AM

What It Takes To Be The Best At Something "In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery."

The Guardian (UK) 11/16/08

email this story | Posted 11/17/08@05:07AM

The Pervasive Power of Punk "Punk's reach extends far beyond that original fistful of fast, loud bands, and its influence goes much deeper than a rebellious musical moment. Punk's legacy is vast. From the do-it-yourself philosophy that informs indie rock to the anti-elitism that fuels the blogosphere, the spirit of authenticity and embrace of amateurism that were the pillars of punk now permeate modern art and culture."

Boston Globe 11/15/08

email this story | Posted 11/16/08@10:13AM

This Is Older Than Any "Knock-Knock" Joke "Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot sketch is actually a lot older than thought - 1,600 years older. An ancestor of the comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century."

Metro (UK) 11/13/08

email this story | Posted 11/13/08@08:01PM

Does Religion Make You Nice And Atheism Make You Mean? In the U.S., "atheists are less charitable than their God-fearing counterparts: They donate less blood, for example, and are less likely to offer change to homeless people on the street." Yet "the Danes and the Swedes [are] probably the most godless people on Earth. They don't go to church or pray in the privacy of their own homes; they don't believe in God or heaven or hell. But, by any reasonable standard, they're nice to one another. They have a famously expansive welfare and health care service. They have a strong commitment to social equality."

Slate 11/07/08

email this story | Posted 11/12/08@09:39PM

The Original Miss Manners That would be Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose 1530 Handbook on Good Manners for Children has been published in a new translation. Some things never change: "His basic tenet is that good manners will spring from 'the ability to ignore the faults of others and avoid falling short yourself'." On the other hand, among his prescriptions are "Do not indulge in hysterical mirth, [and] do not stagger in the theatrical manner favoured by bishops and Swiss soldiers."

The Independent (UK) 11/02/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@09:19PM

They'll Be Burning This Book In Cooperstown "Jane Austen wrote about baseball 40 years before its official invention, according to a new book. But evidence of the game's British origins was erased from history by the American sports magnate Albert Spalding."

The Daily Telegraph (UK) 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@09:17PM

Pushing Your Kids - Is Over-Parenting Harmful? The literature on overparenting raises a number of sticky questions. For example, is it really wrong for us to push our children to excel in areas where they are talented?

The New Yorker 11/09/08

email this story | Posted 11/10/08@07:34AM

The Physics Obama Needs To Know Berkeley professor Richard Muller, author of Physics for Future Presidents, has three areas where he wants our next leader to be informed and aware: terrorism ("beware of the low-tech"), robotics ("most instruments work better when there are not humans walking around and shaking them"), and global warming ("it's going to get much, much worse… [most of the greenhouse gases are] going to come from the developing world").

Wired 11/02/08

email this story | Posted 11/06/08@09:52PM

Reflective Reflections On Self-Referentiality Anthony McGowan gets himself caught in a thought spiral contemplating the implications of such "humourisms" as "Q: What's brown and sticky? A: A stick" and "There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who do not."

The Guardian (UK) 11/04/08

email this story | Posted 11/05/08@09:28PM

An Aphorism A Day Keeps The… "The School of Life - a new offbeat shop-cum-philosphy school in London, selling books, courses and even meals filled with 'intelligent instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life' - has this week launched a website devoted to aphorisms. Each day for a month, thedailyaphorism.com will deliver an aphorism to 'discuss, dispute or distribute'."

The Scotsman 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/05/08@09:25PM

The Beauty Of Divine Inspiration (And Vice Versa) Jonathan Jones: "To me, the whole point of atheism is not worrying too much about it. Campaigning against God, making an issue of unbelief, is merely producing a mirror image of religion itself. […] [But] Religion, in other words, is mixed up with magic, or to put it another way, the kinds of religion that nurture art tend to be. Catholic idolatry begets beauty. Protestantism does not."

The Guardian (UK) 11/03/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@10:02PM

And Then There's Ugliness "Sociologists, writers, lawyers and economists have begun to examine ugliness, suggesting that the subject has been marginalized in history and that discrimination against the unattractive, while difficult to document or prevent, is a quiet but widespread injustice."

New York Times 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@10:01PM

In Humor Sweepstakes, Conservatives Have The Edge "While Americans choose their next president, let us consider a question more amenable to science: Which candidate's supporters have a better sense of humor?" Hint: Not the ones who are personalizing that hilarious MoveOn video.

The New York Times 11/04/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@05:07AM

Frank Capra, Shakespeare and Trollope On Trade and Trust "You recall George: in the person of James Stewart he stopped a run on the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan Association that would have destroyed it in the film 'It's a Wonderful Life.' His predicament, with its eerie prefigurement of the present, provokes a closer look at the crossroads in which culture and finance intersect."

The New York Times 11/04/08

email this story | Posted 11/03/08@05:16PM

The Meltdown, Explained In Terms Arts People Understand "If the invention of derivatives was the financial world's modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, evokes the elusive nature of meaning in deconstructionism."

New Yorker 11/10/08

email this story | Posted 11/03/08@05:03PM

Studies: Political At Birth "Scientists are now discovering that our political attitudes have deep roots in our biology. Our place on the political spectrum - liberal, conservative, or in between - is powerfully influenced by genetics, new studies show. In the past year, researchers have demonstrated that the brains of liberals and conservatives are physically and functionally distinctive, suggesting that people on either side of the ideological divide are actually wired differently."

Boston Globe 11/02/08

email this story | Posted 11/03/08@01:30AM

Finding New Artistic Meaning In A Proust Classic "Even before Marcel Proust died in 1922, ordering iced beer from the Ritz on his deathbed, his monumental novel about art and memory was being dissected for wisdom on a stunning variety of topics... So it's remarkable that before now no one has focused at book length on painting, a subject that dominates his novel... like almost no other."

The New York Times 11/02/08

email this story | Posted 11/02/08@09:32AM

When Speaking Well Was A Good Thing "It's strange to remember there was once a time when highly literate speeches were all the rage. Tragically, that was almost four centuries ago." Author Sarah Vowell's latest book explores the language used by America's earliest settlers, and how it impacted the way we still talk today.

The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/01/08

email this story | Posted 11/02/08@08:54AM

Did A Disastrous Presidency Beget Great Art? "George W. Bush's reign has been controversial from the start, but they say troubled times yield great art. As Americans prepare to pick his successor, we look at movies, books, music, theatre and visual arts and ask: what is his artistic legacy?"

Toronto Star 11/02/08

email this story | Posted 11/02/08@08:37AM

Who Were The Best Presidents? (Make-Believe Edition) If only real life were like Hollywood, George W. Bush might have turned out to be a great president. "In an ideal world it would be great to have a president who can kick some ass," wrote one film critic after seeing Harrison Ford in Air Force One. In our non-ideal world, of course, nuance is more valuable to presidents than ass-kicking skill, but nuance doesn't make for very good Hollywood cliffhangers, does it?

Toronto Star 11/01/08

email this story | Posted 11/02/08@08:29AM

After The Information Age? It's The Arts Baby! "We are witnessing the end of the Information Age, just as our forebears saw the close of the Industrial Age. The heralded knowledge workers of the late-20th century - computer programmers, CPAs, engineers and MBAs - rooted their success in linear, analytical reasoning, traditionally considered left-brain skills. With complex, technical jobs now shifting overseas by the tens of thousands - from financial analysis to software development - the outsourcing megatrend has moved beyond manufacturing into the white-collar arena with skilled workers abroad working for a fraction of U.S-level wages."

San Diego Union-Tribune 10/29/08

email this story | Posted 10/31/08@09:54AM

Defining Dracula: A Century Of Vampire Evolution "Ever since Bram Stoker penned Dracula in 1897, the vampire's image has been a work in progress. In the 43 sequels, remakes and adaptations of Stoker's novel, Transylvania's most famous son rarely appears the same way twice. He has evolved with the society around him."

NPR 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/30/08@09:49PM

Having Vanquished Religion, Richard Dawkins Turns On To Harry Potter And The Tooth Fairy The atheist firebrand and author of The God Delusion "will write a book aimed at youngsters where he will discuss whether stories like the successful JK Rowling series have a 'pernicious' effect on children… [Dawkins] says he intends to look at the effects of 'bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards'."

Daily Mail (UK) 10/25/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@09:45PM

Sperm Whales Singing Duets "New underwater recordings have shown that the whales carefully coordinate their song to match the calls of their singing partner. The animals appear to enjoy singing to each other, possibly to strengthen relationships among females within the group."

New Scientist 10/29/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@09:36PM

The Question At The Heart Of Parsifal, Spamalot And Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade Just what exactly is the Holy Grail anyway? Does it really exist? Did it ever? The Independent explains it all for you.

The Independent (UK) 10/22/08

email this story | Posted 10/28/08@09:32PM

Henry David Thoreau, Climate Researcher "Thoreau died in 1862, when the industrial revolution was just beginning to pump climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 1851, when he started recording when and where plants flowered in Concord, he was making notes for a book on the seasons. Now, though, researchers at Boston University and Harvard are using those notes to discern patterns of plant abundance and decline in Concord -- and by extension, New England -- and to link those patterns to changing climate."

The New York Times 10/28/08

email this story | Posted 10/27/08@07:54PM

And Now... Open Source Hardware "In a loosely coordinated movement, dozens of hardware inventors around the world have begun to freely publish their specs. There are open source synthesizers, MP3 players, guitar amplifiers, and even high-end voice-over-IP phone routers. You can buy an open source mobile phone to talk on, and a chip company called VIA has just released an open source laptop: Anyone can take its design, fabricate it, and start selling the notebooks."

Wired 10/27/08

email this story | Posted 10/27/08@08:08AM

Could We Hardwire Culture Directly Into The Brain? Could we perhaps download War and Peace or, with a nod to The Matrix, a manual of how to fly a helicopter? How about inscribing the sentence "See Spot run" into the memory of someone who is unconscious of the transfer? How about just the word "see"?

Scientific American 11/12/08

email this story | Posted 10/26/08@07:32PM

The House You Could Take With You "What if a house had the built-in capacity to evolve? What if it could grow or shrink, or the rooms could be reconfigured, without hiring contractors and tearing out walls? An emerging movement of architects suggests that we need to start conceiving and designing houses in a new way: Not as immutable objects, expensive and painful to alter, but as flexible structures that can adapt to the inevitable changes in their owners' lives."

Boston Globe 10/26/08

email this story | Posted 10/26/08@08:39AM

Why Do People Collect Autographs? "An autograph gives people who feel intimate with celebrities something tangible to possess, a personal touch. It's a form of cultural tourism more than anything else… but there is also a magical side to it. The most relevant concept here is manna, sacredness in the form of a power that permeates people and also crucially the things they touch."

The Guardian (UK) 10/23/08

email this story | Posted 10/23/08@09:50PM

Giving People Space To Convert Ideas To Inspiration The IdeaFestival, which has been around since 2000, "brings together creative thinkers from different disciplines to connect ideas in science, the arts, design, business, film, technology and education... Whether it is a festival, a concert, a speech, a convention or a book, creative thinkers say, you have to actively look for inspiration, and that takes time."

The New York Times 10/23/08

email this story | Posted 10/23/08@05:56AM

Why Is Everybody So Quick to Take Offense? "A paradox of human life is that the evolutionary forces that have made us cooperative and empathetic are the same ones that have made us prickly and explosive… the paired emotions of gratitude and vengeance helped us become the ultrasocial, ultrasuccessful species that we are. Gratitude allows us to expand our social network and recruit new allies; vengeance makes sure our new friends don't take advantage of us."

Slate 10/17/08

email this story | Posted 10/22/08@09:53PM

Are Humans Biologically Unsuited to the 'American Dream'? "Our built-in dopamine-reward system makes instant gratification highly desirable, and the future difficult to balance with the present. This worked fine on the savanna… but not [in] the suburbs: We gorge on fatty foods and use credit cards to buy luxuries we can't actually afford. And then, overworked, underslept and overdrawn, we find ourselves anxious and depressed."

Wired 10/21/08

email this story | Posted 10/22/08@09:48PM

Pakistan Could Sure Use Someone Like This Now A new documentary remembers Badshah Khan (né Abdul Ghaffar Khan), who "was called 'The Frontier Gandhi' and built an Islamic parallel to Gandhi's violence-eschewing ideals of compassion for one's enemies and peaceful resistance to oppression as a means of overcoming it."

Los Angeles Times 10/19/08

email this story | Posted 10/21/08@09:59PM

A New Kind Of Paper That Can Do... Everything? "Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass."

Discovery 10/17/08

email this story | Posted 10/20/08@07:20AM