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The standard line against painter John Singer Sargent goes like this: a very good painter of incredible technique, but little substance who flattered the rich and famous with decadently beautiful portraiture — a Victorian Andrea del Sarto of sorts whose reach rarely exceeded his considerable artistic grasp. A new exhibition of Sargent’s work and the accompanying catalogues argue that he was much more than a painter of pretty faces. Instead, the exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends and catalogues challenge us to see Sargent’s omnivorous mind, which swallowed up nascent modernist movements not just in painting, but also in literature, music, and theater. Sargent the omnivore’s dilemma thus lies in being too many things at once and tasking us to multitask with him.

Eliminating the estate tax makes no sense in a meritocratic system, yet most Americans are against the so-called “death tax.” The reasons why range from the hypocritical to the woefully ignorant.

All long-term relationships take commitment and work. New York Mag’s Ann Friedman points out that the relationship you have with yourself is by far the longest you’ll ever have. So work on it.

The anatomy and science of what’s required for such a spectacular show. “Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it.” –Summer of 4 ft. […]

Keats explains an experiment in which he opened a restaurant for plants and how it helped spur an exploration of cuisine as cultural trademark.

Treadmill desks shouldn’t be considered an end-all-be-all fitness solution — it’s a way to promote health and lessen the amount of time you sit on a daily basis.

In the story of where all this comes from, our closest world was a mystery for millennia. But now we know! “But even when the moon looks like it’s waning…it’s […]

Live-streamed from Perimeter Institute, & exclusive real-time commentary! “Every generation of physicists solves some old puzzles and finds some new ones.” –Dr. Kendrick Smith I want you to think back […]

Psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD are being researched again after a 40-year hiatus, and the results are promising, from both a scientific and spiritual perspective. 

When vaccine skeptics are presented with statements about the benign nature of vaccines, they double down on their skepticism rather than softening their bias.

A once and a lifetime event has come into our field of view. New Year’s celebrators should be able to easily spot Comet Lovejoy skirting past the constellation Orion in the night sky till mid January.

Just open your eyes, full-screen it, and watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD2XgQOyCCk “Exploring this set I certainly never had the feeling of invention. I never had the feeling that my imagination was rich […]

What happened when researchers strapped fake WiFi routers to people’s heads to test if electromagnetic sensitivity is real or imagined?

Either there’s an unseen source of mass, or the laws of gravity are wrong. But only one can explain what we see. “The discrepancy between what was expected and what […]

Folks in the American Northeast need to monitor their behavior and emotions to avoid suffering from seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Seasonal affective disorder (or, fittingly enough, SAD) is caused by the body’s reaction to the changing times of sunrise and sunset. It’s why some people get depressed in the winter. Luckily, treating it isn’t hard.

There are three things an idea must do to become a full-fledged scientific theory. How does the Multiverse stack up? “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead […]

The possibilities were almost limitless, so why does everything line up? “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless […]

Men can reverse the effects of a poor night’s sleep with a nap, according to researchers.

The largest, diffuse sight in the sky is full of wonder. (And stars, and more!) “The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in […]

A huge percentage of our Universe is blocked by the plane of our own Milky Way. Here’s how we’re finally seeing what’s there! “I am undecided whether or not the […]

“Daddy, why do all the players have dark skin?” When my eldest daughter posed this question one football Saturday six years ago, she had no concept of race in mind […]

How tides, gravity and lava give Io the youngest surface in the Solar System. “The crust, being so thin, must bend, if, over wide areas, it becomes loaded with glacial […]

What do our brains look like when we read aloud? What about when we read to ourselves? To your brain, it’s the same thing.

The forgotten aspects of art history will always be the most intriguing. Digging up the dead storylines of art history, whether in the distant or the recent past, will never end, mostly thanks to forces that buried the facts, if not the bodies, for whatever agenda. Artists and Prophets: A Secret History of Modern Art 1872-1972 at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt resurrects German visionaries and Jesus wannabes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries to look at how their exploits and artistic creations helped shape the course of German and European modern art. It also shines light on how the impact of those figures fell into obscurity as another casualty of the ideological war waged by that most unfortunately unforgettable of German messianic aspirants — Adolf Hitler.

Sleep as we know it has changed over the past few centuries thanks to the invention of the light bulb. The 8-hour sleep cycle may conflict with your body’s natural rhythms. 

The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an odious right-wing organization dedicated to spreading offensive messages about Muslims, won a federal court battle this week against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) […]

Is it sloppiness, laziness, or actual deceit that causes television newspersons to rely on phrases like, “Some people say,” “Some people think,” “It’s been said,” and “A lot of people […]

Angry drivers hate aggressive bicyclists but biking with confidence may the best way to stay safe on city streets.

With the full suite of observations of the Universe now at our disposal, what is the story, contents, and history of the Universe? “People are trapped in history and history […]