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The Malaysian Airlines Flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing
As I write (at 9:30pm EST in the US, 0230 March 8 GMT), things look bad for Malaysian Airlines flight 370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, but nothing is known for sure. The most illuminating information...
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Today Is the 50th Anniversary of the (Re-)Birth of the First Amendment
Every person who writes online or otherwise about public officials, every hack or poet who criticizes the work of government, every distinguished journalist or pajama-ed blogger who speaks truth to...
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When the Suburbs Were Exciting
1. A trip into the Chinese propaganda machine. "I had gone to volunteer my services to the International Channel Shanghai expecting to find the place strange, Orwellian and slightly dangerous. I had...
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Toilet Paper, Now With More Technology!
Let's talk bums. Or, rather, #letstalkbums. That's the hashtag promoted by the toilet paper brand, Cottonelle, at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Yes, a toilet paper brand has a major presence at...
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Science: Several U.S. States, Led by Florida, Are Flatter Than a Pancake
In 2003, the Annals of Improbable Research released the results of a study that was not so much groundbreaking as it was ground-battering: Kansas, the tongue-in-cheek analysis found, was flatter than a...
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Amazing Structure: A Conversation With Ursula Franklin
It’s hard to describe what Ursula Franklin’s done in her life. There’s just too much. The 92-year-old metallurgist pioneered the field of archeometry, the science of dating archaeologically discovered...
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The Travels of Great White Sharks
1. A physicist suggests ditching the transistor for a new type of computing. "Joshua Turner, a physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory... has proposed using the orbits of electrons around...
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How to Fix Panels at SXSW (and Everywhere Else)
It’s peak bad panel season. Yes, you could fill your year-round calendar with alumni events, public library discussions, and JCC chit-chats—but right now, at SXSW Interative in Texas, it’s peak bad...
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Why Cosmos Can’t Save Public Support for Science
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s remake of Cosmos premiered Sunday night on Fox, to rave reviews. The show’s production values are gorgeous, and Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American...
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Tree Rings, A Time-Line
2014 Every schoolchild learns that trees, as they grow, lay down new wood each year, so the age of a tree can be determined by counting the growth rings, officially called...
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We Love Screens, Not Glass
After Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, wore a prototype to a charity event in San Francisco on April 5, 2012, there was a lot of buzz about Google Glass. Early in 2013, the buzz intensified as an...
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What Happens in One Minute Around the World?
A minute is a funny amount of time. It’s long enough to notice—reading this article will take just about a minute—but it’s too short to do much of anything with. There are famously only about five...
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The Engineering of the Chain Restaurant Menu
This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I had lunch at an International House of Pancakes. The menu at this establishment was a book, essentially, large and laminated, featuring page after...
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Video: The Hero of Grandparent Wifi
Anyone can make a funny video, but it’s the mark of the master to create an artifact of the times with that funny video. And that’s what we have here in the Ballad of the Wifi Hero, based on the...
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Why American Manufacturing Declined
1. A powerful argument that investor-driven changes in corporate structure—abetted by communication technologies—are largely responsible for the decline in American manufacturing. "Digitization and the...
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The Reason Songs Have Choruses
It is not hard to estrange the idea of the chorus. Why should songs have some parts that are repeated and others that are not? Imagine other works of art in which a quarter or half of the work is...
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Harvard's Looking for a 'Wikipedian in Residence'
The Houghton Library on the Harvard campus holds the university's collection of rare books. Inside its walls—in addition to objects culled from the old "Treasure Room" of Widener, the school's...
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The 3D Future of Your Smartphone Camera
A matte black robotic camera the size of a 1980s lunchbox sits atop a tripod. On its face, there are three 2D cameras and three 3D sensors. There's a handle on one end sprouting from the left side of...
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How the Target Data Breach Went Down
1. This detailed investigation into how Target let hackers steal 40 million credit card numbers does not inspire confidence in the corporations who handle our Big Data. "On Saturday, Nov. 30, the...
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Why Malaysia Airlines 370 Remains So Profoundly Mysterious, and Why a Better...
(Please see update with the March 14 news.) Here is the heart of the mystery over what has happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370: If the airplane did keep on flying, presumably there would be...
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