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Link Neanderthals really were sex-obsessed thugs

Neanderthals really did act like Neanderthals, new research suggests, as our early relatives were found to be more aggressive, competitive and promiscuous than modern man. Scientists examining fossils have discovered…

November 3 2010, 1:30am | Comments

Link Modern art was CIA 'weapon'

FOR DECADES in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art -…

November 1 2010, 3:57pm | Comments

Link Error in apparatus as aesthetic value

by Alejandro Schianchi An error seems to be that which gets between the ideal being and the real being; the error appears to be a singularity, a Non-being that transforms…

October 26 2010, 2:52am | Comments

Link Finding the Neanderthal within ourselves

Like a disowned half-brother the Neanderthals keep hammering on our door, forcing us to face inconvenient truths. In the nineteenth century, fossil remains of powerful, thickset, short-necked human-like creatures with…

October 22 2010, 9:12am | Comments

Link Manguel, Muse of Impossibility

One day in December 1919, the twenty-year-old Jorge Luis Borges, during a short stay in Seville, wrote a letter, in French, to his friend Maurice Abramowicz in Geneva, in which,…

October 21 2010, 3:52am | Comments

Link The beastliness of modern art

Taxidermy (and the chemistry of the morgue) has been something close to a cult obsession with our contemporary gang. We get it, we get it, you often want to howl…

October 17 2010, 2:35pm | Comments

Link The beastliness of modern art

Taxidermy (and the chemistry of the morgue) has been something close to a cult obsession with our contemporary gang. We get it, we get it, you often want to howl…

October 17 2010, 2:35pm | Comments

Wikipedia Transition (literary journal) - Wikipedia Tired of the spectacle of short stories, novels, poems and plays still under the hegemony of the banal word, monotonous syntax, static psychology, descriptive naturalism, and desirous of…

October 12 2010, 5:09pm | Comments

Link The Art of Marina Abramovic and the Prophesy…

The upside-down values of the art world, popularly infamous, ridiculed, and resented, are by now the mark of the sphere itself, sufficient to establish the cynic’s principle that if you…

October 12 2010, 3:10pm | Comments

Link The Anthropology of Hackers

A "hacker" is a technologist with a love for computing and a "hack" is a clever technical solution arrived through a non-obvious means. It doesn't mean to compromise the Pentagon,…

October 1 2010, 9:08am | Comments

Link What Are Books Good For?

I've been wondering lately when books became the enemy. Scholars have always been people of the book, so it seems wrong that the faithful companion has been put on the…

September 30 2010, 4:23pm | Comments

Link What explains the ascendance of Homo sapiens? Start…

Who among us is invulnerable to the puppy in the pet store window? Not everyone is a dog person, of course; some people are cat people or horse people or…

September 30 2010, 4:22pm | Comments

Link J.G. Ballard reviews Chris Marker's La Jetee

This review appeared in New Worlds in 1966 and as far as I can tell is currently unavailable anywhere else.

September 24 2010, 7:38am | Comments

Link Language as Thought: Watch out for the Hype

Judging from how the Times magazine’s excerpt from Guy Deutscher’s new book has been one of the most read pieces in the paper for over a week now, the book…

September 23 2010, 5:05am | Comments

Link The secret messages written into the fabric of…

I like the BBC test card, because it's a wonderful example of how practical industrial design can develop into an enigmatic work of art. But even better is knowing that…

September 17 2010, 4:40am | Comments

Link Speaking Without Words: Dump.fm and Ryder Ripps

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then maybe we should let dump.fm do the talking. The image-based chat service is the brainchild of Ryder Ripps and the result…

September 11 2010, 4:25am | Comments

Link Code World - 'C' - By Tom McCarthy

There are many stories Tom McCarthy chooses not to tell in “C,” his tour de force new novel encompassing the short life of one Serge Carrefax, born at the turn…

September 11 2010, 4:07am | Comments

Link Mao, King Kong, and the Future of the…

In 2004, Bob Stein founded the Institute for the Future of the Book, with the goal of finding new models for publishing as it moved from the page to the…

September 8 2010, 3:37am | Comments

Link Will the Book Survive Generation Text?

Over the next 10 years, scientific experts will be dealing with "extreme weather." No one knows how weird and dangerous it will get. Moscow already faces Bahrain-like temperatures. Downpours swamp…

September 1 2010, 11:17am | Comments

Link Cover story

In the beginning, before there was such a thing as a Gutenberg Bible, Johannes Gutenberg laid out his rows of metal type and brushed them with ink and, using the…

September 1 2010, 11:16am | Comments

Link Adam Curtis on 'Mad Men'

The widespread fascination with the Mad Men series is far more than just simple nostalgia. It is about how we feel about ourselves and our society today. In Mad Men…

August 31 2010, 3:55pm | Comments

Link First Cannibals Ate Each Other for Extra Nutrition

The world's first known human cannibals ate each other to satisfy their nutritional needs, concludes a new study of the remains of cannibal feasts consumed about one million years ago.…

August 30 2010, 10:11am | Comments

Link The most isolated man on the planet

He's an Indian, and Brazilian officials have concluded that he's the last survivor of an uncontacted tribe. They first became aware of his existence nearly 15 years ago and for…

August 30 2010, 8:05am | Comments

Link Ha-Joon Chang: The net isn't as important as…

Is it really true that the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet? When we assess the impact of technological changes, we tend to downplay things that…

August 30 2010, 4:30am | Comments

Link Did Humans Make Tools, or Did Tools Make…

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist…

August 27 2010, 5:14am | Comments

Link Ideas of the Century: Non-Critical Thinking

Back in 1981, R.M. Hare, in his book Moral Thinking, featured a distinction that today I still find useful. Hare admitted that the distinction was not original with him, but…

August 21 2010, 3:16pm | Comments

Link Reclaiming the Imagination

Imagine being a slave in ancient Rome. Now remember being one. The second task, unlike the first, is crazy. If, as I’m guessing, you never were a slave in ancient…

August 18 2010, 2:12am | Comments

Link The internet: is it changing the way we…

Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Over the…

August 16 2010, 2:46am | Comments

Metafilter Going (London) Underground The London Underground. Every Londoner has used it, but has everyone really seen it? The old map is looking a bit dusty. Perhaps its time for Geographic precision…

August 13 2010, 5:47am | Comments

Link The love of the high-end (book) heist

Books have long been the object of desire, a desire that in intensity (among the susceptible) is stronger than for sex. Bibliomania, the obsession to possess books, was first recognised…

August 13 2010, 4:30am | Comments

Writing from 3quarksdaily 'The Thing Itself' : A Sci-Fi Archaeology

August 8 2010, 9:05pm | Comments

Link Infinite Life

A starry firmament, or sand cascading through one’s open fingers, or weeds springing up time after time: the first conception of infinity, of the uncountable and the unending, is not…

August 5 2010, 3:18am | Comments

Link Awe and the Machine

By the twentieth century, some cynicism had crept into descriptions of the newest machines. Writing about the impact of radio on his rural Maine community, E. B. White observed, "One…

August 2 2010, 4:03am | Comments

Link The Web Means the End of Forgetting

When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced is only one example…

July 25 2010, 7:15am | Comments

Link Technology and the novel, from Blake to Ballard

Writers have long been fascinated by machinery – what it gives and what it takes away. Tom McCarthy, whose experimental work has been hailed as the future of fiction, charts…

July 25 2010, 7:13am | Comments

Link "Lost" Languages to Be Resurrected by Computers?

A new computer program has quickly deciphered a written language last used in Biblical times—possibly opening the door to "resurrecting" ancient texts that are no longer understood, scientists announced last…

July 20 2010, 3:56am | Comments

Link Plato's stave: academic cracks philosopher's musical code

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…

July 20 2010, 2:45am | Comments

Link Essay: Technology changes how art is created and…

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…

July 18 2010, 5:20am | Comments

Link Last Supper helpings have grown

An unusual study looks at the food portions in artistic depictions of the Last Supper throughout history. The apostles have eaten better and better over the years, scholars say. The…

July 11 2010, 4:46pm | Comments

Link Reading in a Whole New Way

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…

July 9 2010, 3:24am | Comments

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