Dozens of Salon alumni have, over the past several months, posted their favorite stories from and memories of the once-beloved liberal news site described as a “left-coast, interactive version of The New Yorker,” a progressive powerhouse that over the years has covered politics with a refreshing aggressiveness, in a context that left plenty of room for provocative personal essays and award-winning literary criticism. Story Continued Below
“We were inmates who took over the journalistic asylum,” David Talbot, who founded the site in 1995, wrote on the Facebook page. “And we let it rip — we helped create online journalism, making it up as we went along. And we let nobody — investors, advertisers, the jealous media establishment, mad bombers, etc — get in our way.”
They are mourning a publication they barely recognize today.
With a surprising new proof, two young mathematicians have found a bridge across the finite-infinite divide, helping at the same time to map this strange boundary.
The boundary does not pass between some huge finite number and the next, infinitely large one. Rather, it separates two kinds of mathematical statements: “finitistic” ones, which can be proved without invoking the concept of infinity, and “infinitistic” ones, which rest on the assumption—not evident in nature—that infinite objects exist.
Recently I was browsing in an esoteric bookshop in a small medieval town in England when I found, among witches’ almanacs, books on dog reincarnation and boxes of runes, a paperback called “The Secret History of the World.” This was the kind of book that had apparently inspired “The Da Vinci Code.” Secret societies, strange connections, gargoyles. I love all that stuff. Who doesn’t? So I almost bought it.
But I didn’t, because I had no need for it. At home I already had a 600-page book, two-thirds read, that had so far promised me insights into numerology, card counting, the chaos of war, the secrets of the city, alchemy, fake books, art history, the rule of three, the manufacture of mirrors and the workings of 16th-century magi. This was the only book I needed; the book I was raving about to my friends before I’d even finished it. The novel whose bookmark was simply a pencil, because of the volume of notes I was making in its margins.
Brunch in Los Angeles can be considered a microcosm of the city itself — a social experiment fueled by Champagne, eggs Benedict, Snapchat filters, sunshine and chefs and patrons, each with increasing levels of celebrity. It would be too easy to write it off as a nonchalant midday meal made popular by a community of freelancers and those with disposable incomes. But within the last eight months, we’ve seen brunch go from diner food to omelets and egg sandwiches made by James Beard-caliber, white tablecloth chefs.