Thursday, August 31, 2006
World
The High Price Of Friendship
When waged for the wrong reasons, coalition warfare is more costly and less effective than fighting alone.
Tech & Science
20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death
Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you didn't know about kicking the bucket.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Tech & Science
Time Before Time
An event like the Big Bang is about as likely as billions of coin tosses all coming up heads. Explaining why that is might take us from empty space to other universes — and through the mirror of time.
Expressions
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
World
America's Muslims Aren't As Assimilated As You Think
The real story of American Muslims is one of acclerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.
Life
Taking Humdrum Astronaut Food, And Kicking It Up A Notch
The first rule about cooking for astronauts is don't make anything that crumbles. No one wants to chase a crumb around a space station.
Latest Food Additive: Viruses
If you want to get rid of a pest, why not use a littler pest to plague it?
Expressions
Monday, August 28, 2006
World
Panic On 43rd Street
By attacking The New York Times for reporting secret anti-terrorism measures, the White House has evoked the government-defying glory days of hte "paper of record." But even as the Times builds a soaring $850 million headquarters, its newsroom, its leadership, and its business are in a crisis of confidence.
The Cheney Presidency
When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney's unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice.
Life
Real Challenge Is Knowing When To Complain
Instant-replay technology and a player challenge system make their Grand Slam debut at the U.S. Open.
Please Don't Let The Sky Fall
Thoughts on raising chickens and children in dangerous times.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Tech & Science
The Math Was Complex, The Intentions, Strikingly Simple
Who needs prizes when you are free to wnader across a plane so lofty that a soda straw and a teacup blur into the same topological abstraction, and there is nothing that a million dollars can buy?
Life
The Infant grammarian
The genius of baby talk.
The Frappuccino Generation
Starbucks says it doesn't market to kids. But its sugary coffee confections represent the new cool for teens. While nutritionists are gasping, the caffeinated kids are buzzing.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Tech & Science
New Age Nuclear
Nuclear energy produces no greenhouse gases, but it has many drawbacks. Now a radical new technology based on throium promises what uranium never delivered: abundant, safe and clean energy — and a way to burn up old radioactive waste.
Life
The Little Documentary That Could
What's IMAX's biggest hit? A schlocky NASA film.
Friday, August 25, 2006
EOF
It's Official: Pluto Stripped Of Planet Status
Pluto was stripped of its status as a planet on Thursday when astronomers from around the world redefined it as a "dwarf palnet", leaving just eight classical planets in the solar system.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Life
Back To School: Students Will See A Food Makeover
Our nation's schools have emerged as a primary battlefield in the fight against childhood obesity.
Strangers At The table
Dining with those you don't know isn't everyone's idea of fun, but an increasing number of local restaurants are encouraging customers to do just that by offering seats at communal tables.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Tech & Science
I ♥ Pluto
My love for our picked-on ninth planet is deeply, perhaps embarrassingly, personal.
Life
Restaurateurs See Faux Pas In Ban On Foie Gras
Don't come between foodies and their foie gras.
Extreme Dining
In the wake of Super Size Me, it looked as if the fast-food giants were embracing healthy eating, with salads appearing on every menu. But that's all over.
Information... Slightly Coloured By Prejudice
Aficionados rank the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica among the finest encyclopedias ever produced, and it is unmatched as recreation for the mind — an intoxicating blend of unparalleled erudition, unexpected facts, and unreconstructed 19th-century attitudes.
Expressions
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Life
Cityscape Of Fear
American architecture is still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. Critics and architects say that security now trumps design, as barricades and mall-like plazas are sucking the soul of urban life.
Expressions
Monday, August 21, 2006
Life
Mind Over Menu
Michel Richard wanted to be a great chef so badly he could taste it.
Odd And Proud
For the smart and off-beat, the fantasy world is a better place.
Run For Your Lives!
A plea to our weather forecasters: stop scaring us to death.
TV's Golden Age
The idiot box has gained some serious IQ points in the last decade. So let us behold: Television as fulfilling as anything at your local multiplex.
Expressions
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Life
Can You Believe What Time It Is?
Whether reinventing the past or envisioning a future, writers are warping the fourth dimension to help audiences travel to an altered state.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
World
Real Crime, Fake Justice
For the last 40 years, government policy in Britain, de facto if not always de jure, has been to render the British population virtually defenseless against criminals and criminality.
Life
When Life Keeps Getting Louder
Police sirens, burglar alarms, thumping music from car stereos, loud neighbours... if you live in a city noise is no longer the forgotten pollutant.
Life Lessons: A Beginner's Guide To Walk-In Art Classes
Improving your drawing skills? Seeking a model? You're welcome here.
EOF
It's Art, Says The Naked Woman Who'll Hug A Dead Pig On Stage
Kira O'Reilly will spend four hours naked, hugging a dead pig — at the taxpayer's expense.
Friday, August 18, 2006
World
What If 9/11 Never Happened?
Without 9/11, would the London plot have been foiled? Without 9/11, would there have been an Iraq war? Without the Iraq war, ould there have been a London plot?
Japan's History Problem
Japan has a serious geopolitical problem — and increasingly it is an American problem as well.
Life
Grasping The Reins Of Reality
Look around you. Virtually everyone in the room is engaged in a job different from the one they prepared for in college.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Tech & Science
For Now, Pluto Holds Its Place In Solar System
Pluto dodged a bullet today.
Pluto's New Place In Space Could Be As A 'Pluton'
Hoping to end the agnoizing over whether Pluto is really a planet, an international committee of astronomers has come up with a new definition that would save the tiny body's place in the sun's family.
Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery
"It's very unusual in math that somebody announcs a result this big and leaves it hanging."
Life
Actually, Hell Is Other People
A new study says Americans have fewer friends than ever — but what if we're enjoying more solitude and intimacy?
Disappearing Ink
The Four Seasons still keeps a stash of menus without prices and still gets plenty of requests for them. Just not as many as in 1977.
Expressions
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Tech & Science
How To Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate
The people determiing the curriculum of our children in many states remain scientifically illiterate. And Kansas is a good case in point.
Life
Speedo Freaks
Since I was a kid I've shunned men's bikini briefs. But now I'm one of the guys with a shiny marble bag — strutting poolside, liberated.
Expressions
EOF
If A Magazine's List Doubles In Size, Is That Inflation?
The platry list of 50 has given way to 100.
Monday, August 14, 2006
World
The New Shape Of Fear
Whoever thought it would come to this, when the evils of humanity could be squeezed into a tube of toothpaste?
Cutting The Strings
From motorcycle helmets to marriage to snacking, why life is better when the government backs off.
Tech & Science
Jurassic Park
The richest undisturbed cache of dinosaur fossils in North America may change the way we see the distant past. It's already transformed rancher Allen Cook's present.
Life
My Liquid-Free Flight Abroad
In some ways, it was like any other Terror Day.
The Lost Art Of Film Editing
Even though moviegoers who never before gave a thought to film grammar can now put together epics on their laptops using iMovie and Final Cut Pro, film editing remains perhaps the least heralded and least understood of the cinema's technical arts.
Outsourced Within
The same technology that makes it possible to outsource to India na dhte Philippines is changing the labor landscape closer to home.
Labor In Translation
Here I was, nine months pregnant, with a new husband and a great job, about to give birth in Japan. Was there something on earth I couldn't do?
Childproof
The age segregation of old folks' homes is supposed to be a concession to medical necessity, not a prequisite that can be marketed to perfectly healthy people annoyed by the din of kickball.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
World
Are Children Getting Cleverer?
What if children were getting better results because they were becoming more intelligent?
Saturday, August 12, 2006
World
What America Doesn't Understand
Homegrown U.K. terror is a growing threat, multicultural "tolerance" can't combat it, and the war in Iraq will only make it worse.
Tech & Science
At The Exploratorium And The Tech Museum, 2 Views Of Science
While the Expoloratorium focuses on experiment, the Tech focuses on sensation. The Exploratorium has the aura of a science fair, the Tech the aura of a sci-fi fair. But both models are in transition and confronting challenges.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Tech & Science
Liquid Threat Is Hard To Detect
Despite knowing for years that liquid explosive posed a threat to airline safety, security agencies have made little progress in deploying technology that could help defend against such attacks, security experts say.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Life
Chinese Tech Buffs Slke Thirst For U.S. TV Shows
Nmerous Chinese groups are translating U.S. television shows and putting them on the internet, dodging Chinese censors and American copyright lawyers.
The Science Of Zzzzz's
With the global economy now taking more executives to far-flung places like Beijing and Mumbai, jet lag is becoming a bigger aggravation, leading sleep researchers to work harder than ever to find suitable remedies.
Dead Ends And Dumplings In Beijing
In pursuit of the city I'd imagined, I had almost ignored the real Beijing before me.
Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Expressions
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
World
The Mismeasure Of Poverty
America's most relied-upon metric for charting a course in our national effort to reduce and eliminate poverty appears to offer unreliable, and indeed increasingly misleading, soundings on what we are today, where we have come, and where we seem to be headed.
Life
Tomatoes
I am finally beginning to understand tomatoes. At least that's how it feels this year.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Life
Hot For Cold
It may be commonplace, but cold coffee drinks were once quite an anomaly.
Facing Middle Age With No Degree, And No Wife
Once, virtually all Americans had married by their mid-40's. Now, many American men without college degrees find themselves still single as they approach middle age.
EOF
Stay-At-Home Bathers Threaten Japan's Ritual Soak
Centuries-old traidition falls victim to country's postwar economic success.
Friday, August 4, 2006
Tech & Science
The Mismeasure Of Woman
Men and women think differently. But not that differently.
Thursday, August 3, 2006
Tech & Science
Abraham Vs Hodgkin: Is A 16-Year-Old Wise Enough To Decide To Skip Chemotherapy?
Should the government intervene to save the life of a 16-year-old boy, even if it means forcing him into medical care against his and his parents' wishes?
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
Life
A New Tasting Menu In The Baby Section
For years baby food changed little. Now there has been a growth spurt of alternatives, from single-ingredient purees to complete toddler meals in designer packages.
A Night Under Ambient Light
Saturday night, in the company of a few dozen New Yorkers and a handful of park rangers, I slept in Central Park.
Expressions
No One In The Library Is Reading
There are mice in the library, and the teenagers are having sex in the reference collection. The junior high boys are expressing their constitutional rights to look at pornography, and the girls are shredding the magnetic strips out of back issues of Vogue and People to steal for their bedroom walls.
A Low Slow Thing Moves Against Darkness, On Wheels
Tuesday, August 1, 2006
World
Two Chinese Villages, Two Views Of Rural Poverty
Women on their own and men who sit idle.
Tech & Science
Dr. Good Has Left The Building
Doctors without patients: can such creatures really exist?
It's Like This, You See
The ability to think metaphorically isn't reserved for poets. Scientists do it too, using everyday analogies to expand their understanding of the physical world and share their knowledge with peers.
Life
The Ever-Changing Eternal Youth Of MTV, Now 25 Going On 11
There's still something marvelous about MTV's continual reinterpretation of domesticity, from te confing teenage bedrooms of the 80's to the "Real World" party palaces to Lauren and Heidi's rich-girl condo on "The Hills."
The First In The Family To Be Supersized
My immigrant mother's infatuation with fast food made me fat. She couldn't have been prouder.
Late Works
Writers and artists confronting the end.
Dancing In The Dark
I was going blind bu thought I could still tell who turned me on. That was until I took home a Bettie Page look-alike who turned out not to be the pinup I'd envisioned.
