Twombly, now 82, is the great survivor of the heroic age of American painting, the generation of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollock, who upended contemporary art.
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After the Big Bang theory was challenged by British cosmologist Robert Penrose, three new papers are pushing back, saying there is no evidence of time before the Big Bang.
Where does sad music get its sadness from? A widely accepted notion is that the interval of a minor third—two pitches separated by one full tone and one semi-tone—conveys sadness.
New York’s art world is the subject of Steve Martin’s third novel, filtered through the eyes of an ambitious young woman. For Martin, the new book comes with greater confidence.
Some economists have suggested adjusting the supply-and-demand problem through market incentives. Instead of asking people to donate their organs, why not just pay for them?
The different reactions from Internet firms to the WikiLeaks publications reveal a dilemma. Many citizens regard the Internet as a public space, but in fact it is a private sphere.
There has been outrage from both sides of the aisle at the deal that Obama has worked out with the Republican leadership to extend the Bush tax cuts. Some Republicans […]
It is that time a year again – final exams, Christmas music and the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. All this does make the end of the […]
Liberals and conservatives have different ways of looking at other people—literally. Scientists say that conservatives tend to ignore what other people look at.
Some historians have regarded Eisenhower’s Farewell Address as an afterthought. Others have regarded it as the soulful expression of a prescient if aging President.
Between 2004 and 2009, the U.S. newspaper industry lost 34 per cent of its readers; the U.K. industry lost 22 per cent. Since then, the speed of the downturn has increased.
Democracy and capitalism have each become compulsory and fundamental, so we can only get outside them through the kind of postsecular leap of faith, says professor Simon During.
The great-grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.
U.S. culture is going down like a thrashing mastodon giving itself up to some Pleistocene tar pit. Either we don’t care or we’re addicted to things that discourage us from caring.
In the wake of controversy over the possible discovery of arsenic-eating life last week a basic question perhaps deserves revisiting: Just what, exactly, is life?
To oversimplify a little, the performance of the world economy in 2011 depends on what happens in three places: the big emerging markets, the euro area and America.
Google thinks its Cr-48, a concept notebook computer that relies on the Web for all its software applications, can compete with computers that run all kids of installed software.
Our emotions can’t comprehend suffering on a massive scale. This is why we are riveted when one child falls down a well, but turn a blind eye to the suffering of millions of people.
According to Giorgio Vasari’s Lives, Domenico Ghirlandaio—whose frescoes graced the walls of the Sistine Chapel before those of his apprentice, Michelangelo—once called the art of mosaics as “vera pittura per […]
Healthy living has been shown to boost brain power. It may also reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.
Since the worldwide success of Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” in 2002, Beijing is increasingly churning out glossy blockbusters whose production values (and budgets) rival those of Hollywood. This is all part […]
We’ve previously looked at severalexamples of Braille-centric design for the blind. Haptic Braille is an ingenious concept by Korean designer Baek Kil Hyun – a portable Braille translator and scanner. […]
After reading George Lakoff’s diary “Untellable Truths” over at Daily Kos this morning, which methodically described why the progressive wing of the Democratic Party always seems to get the short […]
Since it’s birth in 1998, Google has become our gateway to the Web (its supremacy threatened somewhat now by Apple and Facebook). It processes over 1 billion search requests every […]
I have a new book out! It’s Modern and American Dignity: Who We Are as Persons, and What That Means for our Future. Here’s a review/blurb: Peter Lawler is today’s […]
For 50 years, the U.S. Geological Survey has been building an archive of old photos of desert landscapes and new photos of them. Check out the fascinating results.
Ted Cascio on why “The Simpsons” has gone downhill and why it should stop glossing over the issue of racism.
Honey traps, also called “honey pots,” have been a favorite spying tactic as long as sex and espionage have existed—in other words, forever.
If the world’s leading experts in politics, psychology and game theory were to design a problem to be as difficult as possible to solve, it would probably look a lot like climate change.
Spiegel says that it’s only if companies are more generous in their interpretation of fundamental rights that the Internet can continue to function as a public space.