Culture
Posted by Brian Gallagher on November 20, 2020
In the Netflix show The Queen’s Gambit, based on a novel by Walter Tevis, a burly custodian in an orphanage basement, hunched over a chess board, intrigues a nine-year-old girl named…
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Culture
Posted by Brian Gallagher on November 17, 2020
One day in 1787, Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where the founders were debating the shape of a new government. He was confronted by Elizabeth…
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Biology
Posted by Jordana Cepelewicz on November 13, 2020
Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog.Our sense of time may be the scaffolding for all of our experience and behavior, but it is an unsteady and subjective…
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Biology
Posted by Diana Fleischman on November 11, 2020
Imagine you’ve moved into a new neighborhood. You and your new neighbor, Jack, quickly build a friendly rapport and, after a couple weeks, you give him a set of keys, in case of emergency.…
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Culture
Posted by Sevindj Nurkiyazova on November 09, 2020
One of my favorite words is lox,” says Gregory Guy, a professor of linguistics at New York University. There is hardly a more quintessential New York food than a lox bagel—a century-old…
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Biology
Posted by Morgan K. Hoke & Douglas K. Smit on November 04, 2020
The internet doesn’t agree on much these days. But there is one indisputable fact: Baby Yoda is absolutely adorable.For the uninitiated, Baby Yoda is an infantile alien and the breakout…
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Ideas
Posted by Tam Hunt on October 27, 2020
Christof Koch is a neuroscientist distinguished by his rock-solid scientific work and romantic yearning to understand consciousness. He recently closed an essay by wondering: “What is…
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Biology
Posted by Alice Fleerackers on October 26, 2020
Last year I was in San Francisco, a city known for its tech companies, steep hills, and fierce winds. Each day I’d run around the neighborhood and up through the park, ending with a spectacular…
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Culture
Posted by Robert H. Frank on October 23, 2020
During the pandemic, I’ve been participating in weekly Zoom calls with former Peace Corps Volunteers who served with me in Nepal during the late 1960s. As among so many of my other friends,…
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Matter
Posted by Caleb Scharf on October 21, 2020
One of the weirdest things about our human experience of the world is how remarkably narrow it can be. We’re equipped with some extraordinary senses for sure. Our visual system can discriminate…
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