November 2009
45 posts
Who Needs Mathematicians for Math, Anyway? →
The statistics on U.S. math performance are grim. American eighth-graders ranked 25th out of 30 countries in mathematics achievement on the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which claims to assess application of the mathematical knowledge and skills needed in adult life through problem-solving test items. We do better on the Trends in International Mathematics and...
Solving the Enigma: History of the Cryptanalytic... →
As the German military grew in the late 1920s, it began looking for a better way to secure its communications. It found the answer in a new cryptographic machine called “Enigma.” The Germans believed the encryption generated by the machine to be unbreakable. With a theoretical number of ciphering possibilities of 3 X 10114, their belief was not unjustified.1 However, they never...
How Einstein Divided America's Jews →
In 1921, Albert Einstein’s first trip to America triggered the kind of mass hysteria that would greet the Beatles four decades later. But as newly published documents show, it also tore a sharp rift between European Zionists and some of their fellow Jews across the Atlantic, men like Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, who felt that the best way for Jews to get ahead was to assimilate, not...
Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector →
Presidential candidates are calling for tougher labor standards in trade agreements. But can such standards be enforced? Here’s what I learned from my old job.
The Cyberwar Plan →
It’s not just a defensive game; cyber-security includes attack plans too, and the U.S. has already used some of them successfully.
“SuperFreakonomics” and climate change →
Is there a quick fix for the climate?
Either/Or →
Sports, sex, and the case of Caster Semenya.
Taman Shud Case →
The Taman Shud Case, also known as the “Mystery of the Somerton Man”, is an unsolved case revolving around an unidentified man found dead at 6.30am, December 1, 1948 on Somerton beach in Adelaide, Australia.
1491 →
Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact
The Man Who Predicted the Depression →
Ludwig von Mises explained how government-induced credit expansions led to imbalances in the economy.
The Year the World Really Changed →
Forget the fall of the iron curtain: the events of ‘79 matter more.
Mr. X →
This account was written [by Carl Sagan] in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971).
It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life - a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become...
Sextortion at Eisenhower High →
Last year, an awkward high school senior in Wisconsin went online, passed himself off as a flirtatious female student, and conned dozens of his male classmates into e-mailing him sexually explicit images of themselves. What he did next will likely send him to jail for a very long time
The Dad's Army of British cryonics →
In a bungalow in Peacehaven, by the east Sussex seaside, a 72-year-old man and his 62-year-old wife are planning their future. There’s no discussion of anything morbid, like death, because, as far as they are concerned there is no such thing as death. When they stop breathing, they will pass into a state of suspended animation. They will be frozen in a giant flask of liquid nitrogen at...
Captives →
What really happened during the Israeli attacks?
The Gay Animal Kingdom →
Giraffes have all-male orgies. So do bottlenose dolphins, killer whales, gray whales, and West Indian manatees. Japanese macaques, on the other hand, are ardent lesbians; the females enthusiastically mount each other. Bonobos, one of our closest primate relatives, are similar, except that their lesbian sexual encounters occur every two hours. Male bonobos engage in “penis fencing,” which leads,...
Confessions of a 'Contra' →
How the CIA masterminds the Nicaraguan insurgency.
Why dolphins are deep thinkers →
The more we study dolphins, the brighter they turn out to be
Into the Zombie Underworld →
An American tries to separate truth from lore as he searches for a lost soul in rural Haiti.
Flesh of Your Flesh →
Should you eat meat?
The Disappearance of Ford Beckman →
How a celebrated American artist was forced to trade his multimillion-dollar collection for a job selling donuts
Addicted to Cute →
America has been flooded by a tsunami of cute–we’re drowning in puppies and kittens and bunnies and cupcakes–that is transforming marketing (the geico Gecko), automobiles (the Smart car), and movies (Up). But is the world bound to sour on all this sweetness?
Together Forever →
Your recycling and your trash, sharing cramped quarters in the trucks of private D.C. haulers.
Lost in the Waves →
Swept out to sea by a riptide, a father and his 12-year-old son struggle to stay alive miles from shore. As night falls, with no rescue imminent, the dad comes to a devastating realization: If they remain together, they’ll drown together.
(HED) Folo My Lede (UNHED) →
Why the spelling lede , never lead ? The flecked beige copy paper and thick pencils are no longer to be found in the newly quiet newspaper offices where typewriters have been banished, and “pounding” the sensually ergonomic keyboard is as frowned on as smoking. The last time I wrote -30- to mark the end of a story, a copyindividual at the other end of the modem wanted to know,...
Hacks: A Baltimore Way of Life →
Doug’s car isn’t painted yellow; there’s no meter mounted on the dashboard, no barrier walling off the backseat. He has no legal license to be giving anyone a ride in exchange for money. Doug is a hack.
Correlation implies Causation →
An often repeated mantra is this: correlation does not imply causation. This is wrong.
Same as It Ever Was →
In mid-February 1999, an 11-page document called “The Rock Critical List” landed on the desks of several music editors and a music publicist in New York City. Squished into single-spaced Geneva and subtitled “Squirming in a box marked ‘Fucked’ since 1998,” the List bemoaned the state of rock criticism by insulting a cohort of its practitioners.
Endless Summers →
Throughout his dazzling but controversial career—top World Bank economist, Treasury secretary, Harvard University president, and now head of the White House National Economic Council—Larry Summers has been his own worst enemy. As friends, colleagues, and Summers himself try to explain his reputation for arrogance, bullying, and insensitivity, the author learns about his more private battles,...
The Pima Paradox →
Can we learn how to lose weight from one of
the most obese people in the world?
Gladwell for Dummies →
That success is in the eye of the unsuccessful would seem to be the great unspoken dilemma dogging critics asked to consider the work of the rich and famous author and inspirational speaker Malcolm Gladwell. No matter how well intentioned or intellectually honest their attempts to assess his ideas, the subtext of Gladwell’s perceived success, and its implications for their own aspirations...
Cheap Laughs →
The smug satire of liberal humorists debases our comedy—and our national conversation.
Big Bird, Meet Dick and Jane →
A critique of Sesame Street
The Problem With Music →
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry...
Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed? →
With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada’s, eight times greater than France’s, and twelve times greater than Japan’s. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on our closest...
Gutenberg and How Typography is Like Music →
Typography has a visceral and direct effect on everybody who reads. It can inhibit or enhance the feel of reading without being consciously noticeable. It does so by combining specific visuals that echo cultural memories, which are hopefully servile to the words they spell.
A Crime of Shadows →
After months of prowling Internet chat rooms, posing as the mother of two young daughters, Detective Michele Deery thought she had a live one: “parafling,” a married, middle-aged man who claimed he wanted to have sex with her kids. But was he just playing a twisted game of seduction? Both the policewoman and her target give the author their versions of the truth, in a case that challenges the...
Dream On A Shelf →
There was one player whose name was even more recognizable than some of the former big leaguers who were passing through on their way to athletic oblivion, a name that somehow had become representative of all that fans hate about modern-day players. Synonymous with greed. That would be Bill’s son, Matt Harrington, who — after being selected No. 7 in the baseball draft only two years...
The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet →
Al Gore’s views on climate change are advancing as rapidly as the phenomenon itself.
The Story of a Snitch →
Across our inner cities, the code of omerta has spread from organized crime to ordinary citizens. “Stop snitching” has become a motto to live—or die—by, as John Dowery Jr. discovered.
How an accident caused the Berlin Wall to come... →
Once events make their passage from news of the day into history books, it is hard to imagine that they could have happened any other way. They’re history, after all. And 20 years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall seems like that kind of history — a world-changing event that we commemorate and celebrate, its heroes and villains well established, its images and significance clearly...
Dangerous Minds →
Criminal profiling made easy.
The Troubles of Korea’s Influential Economic... →
Until the day he was outed, the most influential commentator on South Korea’s economy lived the life of a nobody. Park Dae-Sung owned a small apartment in a middle-class neighborhood of Seoul and freelanced part-time at a telecom company. Thirty years old, he still hoped to earn a four-year degree in economics. In the mornings, he would bicycle to the public library to study for the university...
The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of... →
In depicting the emergence of the world’s languages as a curse of gibberish, the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel makes us moderns smile. Yet, considering the headache that 6,000 languages can induce in real life, the story makes a certain sense.
The Unrepentant Chocolatier →
The world’s biggest food company is betting on an emerging class of health and nutrition products to spur its growth. But risks abound