The Mesa Verde mystery What led an entire society to leave its homeland in the thirteenth century? Vultures carve lazy circles in the sky as a stream of tourists marches down a walkway into Colorado's Spruce Canyon. Watching their steps, the visitors file along a series of switchbacks leading to one…

The first constitution to govern what is now North Carolina, other than the original royal charter, was written for hire by the political philosopher John Locke, who served as secretary to the colony’s Lords Proprietors. These rich Englishmen directed their draftsman to open with a statement of…

Sunday, July 26 Hi everyone, I have reached the end of the known world. The small peninsula called Finisterre in Spanish and Fisterra in Galician is the westernmost spot in Spain. The Romans thought it was the end if the earth, or finis terrae. A lighthouse protected ships from the treacherous rocks…

ECONOMIC inequality in the United States is at its highest level since the 1930s, yet most Americans remain relatively unconcerned with the issue. Why? One theory is that Americans accept such inequality because they overestimate the reality of the “American dream” — the idea that any American, with…

New Trout Cave Entrance Water I lived for many years without running water and quite a few without electricity, but once I got set up with it I expected it to work. When we didn’t have electric we had a hand pump, you know, the old fashioned pitcher pump kind you have to prime with a little water…

“So much of our manufactured environment testifies to carelessness,” Ive says. Things are “developed to be different, not better.” Photograph by Pari Dukovic I. Launch Day In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Apple—who used to play rugby in…

Cocoa is the de facto standard library of Objective-C, containing many of the essential frameworks for working in the language, such as Foundation, AppKit, and Core Data. Cocoa Touch is basically just Cocoa with UIKit substituted for AppKit, and is often used interchangeably with Cocoa to refer to…

The artisan as scientist: baker Jonathan McDowell in the Bread Lab Photos: Tom Philpott Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Washington State University’s agriculture research and extension facility in Mount Vernon, about an hour due north along the Puget Sound from…

Cutting the hours we work each week to 30 instead of 40 would improve our wellbeing, our family life, friendships and communities, they say. Combined with a range of new career breaks, it could also lower carbon emissions, it was argued. The claims are made in new book by the New Economics…

Story highlights Computer use can strain your eyes There's even a name for it: Computer Vision Syndrome There are ways to combat the damage The rumor: You can damage your eyes by looking at a computer screen for too long After staring at a monitor for hours on end, have your eyes ever felt dry,…

Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboards

The 55 miles from Campbell to San Francisco make for one of the nicest commutes anywhere. The journey mostly zips along the Junipero Serra Freeway, a grand and remarkably empty highway that abuts the east side of the Santa Cruz Mountains . It is one of the best places in Silicon Valley to spot a…

In late 1992, Quentin Tarantino left Amsterdam, where he had spent three months, off and on, in a one-room apartment with no phone or fax, writing the script that would become Pulp Fiction, about a community of criminals on the fringe of Los Angeles. Written in a dozen school notebooks, which the…

The best small TV for most people is the 32-inch TCL Roku . Since most 32-inch TVs are meant for a secondary room or to be very price conscious, this TCL set stands apart with its affordable price tag and integrated Roku functionality. As a result, it has the best smart features of any small TV and…

Adrian Lobb talks with the critic, writer and comedian about his new book, creating rather than critiquing television, and his future on TV and in print "I’m just getting in a car and eating some toast. This is about as multi-tasking as I get." Yet these days, Charlie Brooker juggles the various…