Swarm Dynamics
Ants aren't smart. Ant colonies are. Now we're studying how that works.
Wes Phillips
The Rhythm of Life
This clip has it all: Bob Fosse choreography, psychedelic Bach, frug-dancing zombie hippies, and Sammy Davis as a manic street preacher.
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Getting Medieval
"'When you say fantasy,' said a tall, pale, blonde woman, 'you think medieval. So: Why?'
I Like Red Butts and I Can Not Lie
Perhaps trichromatic vision serves an evolutionary purpose other than choosing ripe fruit. nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Bert Jansch, Guitar God
I've been a Bert Jansch fan since the mid-sixties. Naturally, when he played my hometown recently, I was forced to be elsewhere.
Let Us Remember Happier Times
When our city and our lives were graced by Beverly Sills.
The New Age of Ignorance
Tim Adams was interviewing James Watson one day when he innocently remarked upon the "perfect simplicity" of Watson/Crick's revelation of the genetic code.
The Face of Age
Mark Story photographs faces that have been lived in.
Summing Up Literature
A statistical analysis of literature yields some surprises.
Katie Roiphe, Gay Divorcee
"In the weeks after my husband moved out, I received an email from someone offering to help me clean the house or cook, an email that evokes images of dishes piling up in the sink, flies hovering around half-eaten peanut-butter sandwiches, laundry accumulating. I wonder where these nightmarish visions of our domestic situation are coming from. Why would the departure of my husband launch me and my daughter into a life of squalor? Someone else writes: 'There are no words for a catastrophe of this magnitude. I am thinking of you.' And it begins to seem as if my husband has, in fact, not moved five minutes away but died."