Every time I spark up, I consider the relationship between all of my smoking selves. Am I reborn each time I smoke − a fag-wielding phoenix? Photograph: Photoshot/Getty Images I t happens all the time
Having come across one another’s work on The Quietus, British-Maltese writers Jen Calleja and James Vella worked together to create versions of two poems by celebrated Maltese poet Adrian Grima using
CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’ | This is part of an occasional series about the rise of the Islamic State militant group, its implications for the Middle East, and efforts by the U.S. government and othe
For most of his lifetime T S Eliot appeared an austere and reticent figure. During the long breakdown of his first marriage, to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, he took a vow of celibacy in 1928, controlled his r
Considering the current preponderance of formats—including vinyl, streams, CDs, and cassettes—how we listen to music can now seem just as revealing as what we’re listening to. By Joel Oliphint. If spe
Soy-Roasted Brussels Sprouts Photo by L.V. Anderson Brussels sprouts’ transformation from maligned cafeteria gross-out fare to foodie luminary is complete. Trendy New York restaurants gussy them up wi
An Appetite for Wonder: The Makings of a Scientist by Richard Dawkins (Ecco Press) If an autobiography can ever contain a true reflection of the author, it is nearly always found in a throwaway senten
Richard Dawkins at home in Oxford.Photograph: Graeme Robertson I n Dublin, not long ago, Richard Dawkins visited a steakhouse called Darwin’s. He was in town to give a talk on the origins of life at T
Make me a Shoreditch ... Door 19 restaurant in Moscow, part of the proposed ArtKvartal district.Photograph: Studio PH.D D amien Hirst and David LaChapelle artworks adorn the raw concrete walls. Flair
Cultural Studies Christian Bailey, a 58-year-old physicist who works for a manufacturing company in Elkton, Md., was attending a conference on progressive health care issues when he began to feel self
Early in 2014, Isis released one of its first videos. Largely unseen in Europe, it had neither the slick, cutting-edge professionalism of its later execution tapes nor the haunting “nasheed” music tha
Arik Sosman Follow Nov 9, 2015 · 7 min read Facebook has recently launched a limited beta of its ground-breaking AI called M. M’s capabilities far exceed those of any competing AI. Where some AIs woul
Photo by Thomas Northcut/Thinkstock, with additional illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker I remember the moment in vivid detail. Our middle school principal, a stoic woman with warm eyes and steely nerv
Nearly a week after the killings, business-as-usual is the banner flying over Paris. The return to normal, with its flavour of defiance, can be observed in action anywhere from Châtelet as far as the
The Place of Dead Roads by William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition by William S. Burroughs Letters to Allen Ginsberg, 1953–1957 by William S. Burroughs Burroughs a film
As everyone knows after 15 years of reality television , it’s incredibly difficult for people on singing competitions to make the jump to actual stardom. So in the age of musical dramas like ABC’s cou
Toby Melville / Reuters From Homer’s The Iliad to A.E. Housman’s poem about an athlete dying young, there’s no shortage of literary depictions of running. “Move, as the limbs / of a runner do,” writes W.H. Auden . “In orbit go / Round an endless track.” There’s also a long tradition of writers…
THE AUTHOR of multiple books of nonfiction — including The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age , The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again , and The Other Walk: Essays — Sven Birkerts has remained a prolific and significant voice in literary and cultural criticism, showing a…
The scariest thing about ISIS (if, like most Americans, you are in no actual danger of coming into contact with ISIS) is that the more members (or fanboys) you follow on Twitter, the more they resembl
The Virus Is Our Idea of Ourselves Against the Crisis Culture canceled ANTI-KY-THE/RA Do-It-Yourself Time Travel #FUTURISTGARVEY Nonlocality Vol.1 Nonlocality Vol.2 Red Summer Synchroniciy, Superposit
Most academic journals charge expensive subscriptions and, for those without a login, fees of $30 or more per article. Now academics are using the hashtag #icanhazpdf to freely share copyrighted papers. Scientists are tweeting a link of the paywalled article along with their email address in the…
Oct 22nd 2015 BUCHAREST THE makers of the Romanian edition of the board game Monopoly may want to consider altering the “Get out of jail free” card to one reading “Wrote a book in jail”. A change in t
Artificial intelligence has an Achilles’ heel. It can’t decide what’s relevant. Margaret A. Boden This story is part of our November/December 2015 issue See the rest of the issue Subscribe It just so happens that this is a crucial skill where creativity is concerned. Take computer-generated art.…
At six in the morning on Sunday, 12 March, a procession snaked toward the bronze doors of St. Peter’s. Swiss Guards led the line, followed by barefoot friars with belts of rope. Pius took his place at
Every month, Norwegian physicians get a new floppy disk from the government. The disk has the updated patient list for the month under the country’s nationalized health plan. Why floppy disks? It turn
D on Quixote is one of those books whose influence is so far-reaching as to be almost ubiquitous, like The Odyssey , or the Bible. And like the Bible or Homer’s epic, it is more often talked about tha
Luke Turner looks back 25 years to a singular album and a nation standing at a cultural crossroads September 25, 1995. After school, the walk into town to Our Price. I might have been wearing my grey
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. Garry Kasparov on a television monitor at the start of the final match against IBM's Deep Blue
The Revolution That Didn’t Happen STEVEN WEINBERG I first read Thomas Kuhn’s famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions1 a quarter-century ago, soon
Errol Morris on photography. This is part one of a five-part series. 1. THE ULTIMATUM I don’t want to die in a language I can’t understand. — Jorge Luis Borges (as quoted in Alberto Manguel, “With Bor
The Google Art Heist PARIS — JUST seeing the Crayola colors painted on the tall iron fence of the 18th-century hotel particulier made me shiver. The big panda in flip flops in the lobby, arms up in gr
It’s been 17 years since my realization that I was hoarding footnotes. I was using plenty of footnotes in my own academic work: I had been doing that since graduate school. But I was withholding footnotes from undergraduates. Not that I was actively forbidding undergraduate students from inserting…
Credit... Mark Todd I call it the newspaper problem: About a decade ago I wrote an essay on contemporary poetry for a newspaper that will remain nameless, and had the occasion to quote a line by “Elio
“It was the terrific leader of India, Gandhi, who said, ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, and then you win.’ Well we won, didn’t we?” That’s how President Donald John Trump began his inaugural address, that clear morning in January of 2017. The fact that Gandhi…
For 40 years, computer scientists have tried in vain to find a faster way to do an important calculation known as “ edit distance .” Thanks to groundbreaking work from two researchers at MIT, they now
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