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The Roaring Twenties

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 08:17:08 GMT

By Joseph Ridgwell, 3:AM Magazine

Creating Another Einstein

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 01:11:10 GMT

By Sheilla Jones, Literary Review of Canada

What would it take to produce another Einstein? That is a question that returns with cyclical regularity in the physics community. But there is no need for the world to wait for someone of Albert Einstein’s remarkable vision and achievement to just happen along, not when we have got an Einstein factory right here in Canada.

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The String Theory

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:36:15 GMT

By David Foster Wallace, Esquire

What happens when all of a man’s intelligence and athleticism is focused on placing a fuzzy yellow ball where his opponent is not? An obsessive inquiry (with footnotes), into the physics and metaphysics of tennis.

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Get Smarter

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:34:36 GMT

By Jamais Cascio, The Atlantic

Pandemics. Global warming. Food shortages. No more fossil fuels. What are humans to do? The same thing the species has done before: evolve to meet the challenge. But this time we don’t have to rely on natural evolution to make us smart enough to survive. We can do it ourselves, right now, by harnessing technology and pharmacology to boost our intelligence. Is Google actually making us smarter?

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Dancing About Architecture

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 06:54:25 GMT

By Arthur Phillips, The Believer

A meditation on possibly futile artistic pursuits.

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Demon Brother: 6 Thoughts on Heart in Fiction

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:35:53 GMT

By Blake Butler, HTMLGIANT

I’ve heard / been asked a lot about the concept of ‘heart’ lately, and last night I couldn’t sleep.

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The Reluctant Poet Laureate

Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:33:57 GMT

By Louisa Thomas, New York Times

Kay Ryan has lived in the same small house on a hill in Marin County, Calif., for 30 years. She shingled the exterior walls and covered the steps and walkways in bright tile scraps herself. The house suits her—filled with artwork by friends and with books, surrounded by mountain-biking trails, sheltered by plants. She likes being in this out-of-the-way place, keeping her distance. As she settles into a faded pink director's chair, chatting amiably, her hazel eyes are warm but a little guarded. This is what she had dreaded when she agreed to become the poet laureate of the United States—that a reporter would show up at her door and ask her to hold forth on the State of American Poetry for the Masses. But Ryan is a kind and generous person, and so she has sliced lime for this interloper's sparkling water, offered her cut cantaloupe, and invited her onto the tiny deck lined with low-hanging strawberries, a geranium, lemon verbena, cacti. The pots were planted by Carol Adair, Ryan's spouse and longtime partner, who died of cancer in January. Ryan is doing her best to keep the plants alive, to halt the geranium's browning.

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