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When you hear the name Edvard Munch, you almost immediately think of The Scream. It’s unavoidable.  Even during his lifetime, Munch found himself linked to that image and a select […]

Scientists have figured out how independent, programmable nano-scale robots can be made out of individual molecules—with the robots’ actions programmed into their environment.

More than 50 years after the publication of CP Snow’s seminal Two Cultures, interdisciplinary partnerships between science and other academic “cultures” are being urged once again. Today, the focus is […]

5,000,000 Hits n Thirty hits – that’s how many this blog accumulated for the whole of September 2006, the first month of its existence. The numbers for October were a bit better – […]

“Hyenas … have been terribly misunderstood,” writes Constance Casey. “The creatures may not be beautiful, but they don’t deserve contempt.”

“There is certainly some strange power that has some overlook on me & directing my life,” Winslow Homer wrote in a letter to his brother late in his life. “That […]

George Packer’s review of Peter Beinart’s book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is itself an elegant analysis of American history. Packer highlights some of choices our leaders […]

Wall Street II features a hedge fund manager. What will he be like? N+1 editor Keith Gessen has published a book,Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous […]

Thanks to the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s runaway hit, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” we tend to think of undercover operative agents as not only being uncommonly good looking but […]

“Remarkable claims require remarkable proof.” — Carl Sagan The “multiverse” idea—once thought to be so crazy it only belonged on late night television—has now become the dominant theory in all of […]

The secessionist project hit its stride at exactly the worst time possible

Is there such a thing as collective guilt? Or if not that, then at least some kind of national responsibility for past state crimes? Was the Nazi period a freak of history, […]

I learned a new word today, but the condition it describes has been with me for quite some time: cartocacoethes – the compulsion to see maps everywhere. More on that […]

Now that we’ve established that attractive people earn more money, apparently it’s not just academics who are beginning to notice a difference in lifestyle. With state and federal governments looking […]

Hoarders have “a sense of intense responsibility for objects and an unwillingness to waste them,” says Randy Frost. They also have an ability to find beauty in things that other people might not appreciate.

Beauty entrepreneurs Malin and Goetz reflect on how their sexuality has influenced their experience of starting a business.

How designers are revolutionizing corrective eyewear with low-cost, durable, beautifully designed glasses for the developing world, where lack of access to vision healthcare presents an obstacle to anything from basic safety to education

The Impressionists now stand as the ultimate in artistic comfort food for the mainstream public. The billowy softness of their images graces office walls in framed reproductions and countless calendars. […]

For Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz, a business was born from a bar of soap. For most of his life, Goetz washed his face, body, hair and shaved with the […]

Catherine Asaro, the bestselling science-fiction author, uses concepts from physics and math to inform the fantastical stories of her characters. In a recent interview with Big Think, Asaro describes how […]

Half a million people die annually in the United States from substance abuse or addiction, which represents 1 in 5 deaths overall. One-half trillion dollars are lost annually in the […]

In March, Sunlight Labs announced Design for America — a 10-week design and data visualization contest aiming to connect the creative community with the increasing amounts of public data produced […]

Ok, I have to admit it. I did not watch the World Cup match between Germany and England. In fact the only match I have watched was the incredibly dull […]

Edmund White is one of the finest writers writing today, and the fact that he is writing a blog for the New York Review of Books—or, moreover, the fact that […]

Brooklyn-based design studio Hyperakt operates under the admirable slogan of “Meaningful Design for the Common Good” – a commitment to only work with companies whose products and services create positive change […]

Here’s the tricky thing about ozone: we want lots of it up high in the upper atmosphere, where it blocks radiation and protects us, but we want as little of […]

Up until just a few hundred years ago most people thought that the Universe was a stable, static place that had been here forever and would continue forever. Today we […]

Insects have long been objects of fascination in classical literature, children’s nursery rhymes, and in the culture at large. Hugh Raffles’ interest in insects stemmed from his work in the Amazon, […]

Long dead and gone, the Rochester Subway lives on in the imagination – and on this map

“Most people who appear phenotypically ‘black’ enjoy neither the privilege nor the inclination to play around on a government form designed to track and remediate generations of prejudice,” writes Patricia Williams.