Taipei Times – archives

In 1979-80, a six-part documentary called The Mighty Micro was broadcast on ITV. Written and presented by the late Christopher Evans of the National Physical Laboratory, and based on his book of the same name, the series looked at the ways the world might be changed by the microcomputer revolution. The BBC responded with a [...]

Reason: What’s Your Favorite Novel? A recent survey of men’s and women’s favorite books points to a more fundamental question—and a fascinating answer.

Classical: Edward Said on why Così fan tutte is one of the most complex and unexpectedly dark of all Mozart’s operas. [Guardian Unlimited Arts]

Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Books will disappear. Print is where words go to die

Voltaire loved Emilie du Châtelet, Rousseau hated Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau hated each other. [TPM Online News]

Austria is celebrating the famous composer’s 250th birthday this year.

If you want to know him, you have to know Salzburg and Vienna.

Some key locations in the composer’s life still stand in Austria today.

Edge 185: Dark Materials

IT Trends

The principal accused was an Auschwitz commandant, one Wilhelm Boger, whose sobriquet was “The Tiger of Auschwitz.” He was a man who had been arrested after a successful postwar career, having become a rich businessman who’d never been questioned before. At that time he was in his late 60s. Of the many witnesses for [...]

What’s intriguing about the dreadful psychology of Muslim, particularly Shiite fundamentalism, is that aspect of terrible fixity, that manifests itself as a kind of violent sleepwalking in its adherents. It is as though all those masses of young men and boys whose despondent faces we saw a decade and more ago in the news [...]

Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 begins with a striking narration of the film’s credits. The premise is simple: talk becomes the natural medium in an illiterate state. When the firemen, that is, the book burners, arrive at a high rise with orders to burn books we are immediately struck by the stark and vulgar aesthetics of [...]

AT FIRST GLANCE, Walter Benjamin, the bespectacled, bushy mustached, deeply serious, and influential German literary critic, may not strike you as a likely drug user. Indeed, he considered drugs a poison,” and a rather disreputable one at that. As Marcus Boon writes in his introduction toOn Hashish,” a slim English translation of Benjamin’s writings [...]

A century of slaughter – Books – Times Online

Doom and Demography

Commentary – Stravinsky & Co.

Are suicide bombers “crazy?” Or are they making rational strategic choices designed to achieve certain goals? Neither conventional interpretation is correct in the case of the second intifada, according to provocative new research from University of Toronto sociology professor Robert Brym. [EurekAlert]

Back when he was 20 years old in 1965, rock star Pete Townshend wrote the line “I hope I die before I get old” into a song, “My Generation” that launched his band, the Who, onto the rock ‘n’ roll scene. But a unique new study suggests that Townshend may have fallen victim to a [...]

A close look at Earth’s geologic past has offered a glimpse of the long-term future, with a 100 percent chance of endless change. [Discovery Channel News]

The three-dimensional calendar is the oldest of its kind ever to be found in the Americas. [Discovery Channel News]

A world of arms pushers and fixers, by Brian Wood

Europe’s deadly business, by Helen Hughes

‘Universal Leonardo’ builds a comprehensive portrait of the quintessential Renaissance man.

LITTLE BLACK HOLES / Researchers say there might be tiny versions of galactic giants throughout Milky Way

Rocks may hold key to oldest life | Chicago Tribune

Despite its ubiquity, we still have a lot to learn about water.

Gyorgy Ligeti died today, June 12, 2006. Here is an obituary from CNN. Update: Marvin Rosen is doing a special memorial tribute to Ligeti on his radio show “Classical Discoveries” this Thursday morning, June 15 from 8:30 until 11:00. The entire program [Sequenza21]

Samuel Butler as a novelist has had an influence on writers as diverse as E.M.Forster and Saul Bellow. But he also contributed to the emerging debate on evolution provoked by Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species. Horatio Morpurgo argues that this Victorian intellectual’s writing, provocative as it is, bears comparison with the [...]

Wikipedia’s visionless, self-selected, value-light online encyclopedia is a deformed shadow of what the global public deserves, says former editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, Robert McHenry. [Open Democracy]

We moralize about it. Then we borrow. [NYT Magazine]

Sonia Shah’s new exposé reveals how drug companies prey on poor people overseas by using them in tests for new—and often dangerous—meds. [AlterNet: Coverage Areas]

Al-Ahram Weekly | Features | The essence of colonialism

VANITY FAIR : FEATURES : CONTENT

Edge 184

Print – Ancient Alexandria Exhibit: Murder, Mayhem and Mystery on Display – International – SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Russia on the couch – TLS Highlights – Times Online

Telegraph | Entertainment | Mysterious for evermore

PREVIEW: Dr. Leavis, I Presume?

Where Edward Said was wrong – History – Times Online

TheStar.com – The in-betweeners

Australian Financial Review -

Australian Financial Review -

Australian Financial Review -

Australian Financial Review -

The Irascible Professor-commentary of the day 06-07-06. Calculator dependence.

HIV origin is traced to wild chimps | Chicago Tribune

Test Shows Drop in Science Achievement for 12th Graders – New York Times

Tropics are expanding, study finds | csmonitor.com

The Irascible Professor-commentary of the day 05-30-06. What are we willing to do to improve education?

The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture

Edward Emerson Barnard’s Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way

‘One More Once’ A Centennial Celebration of the Life and Music of Count Basie

The strange genius of Oprah

Essays: ‘After Freud’ by Alexander Linklater | Prospect Magazine June 2006 issue 123

Reviews: ‘Cinema gets real’ by Mark Cousins | Prospect Magazine June 2006 issue 123

The New Atlantis – The Mislabeled Child – Brock L. Eide and Fernette F. Eide

The New Atlantis – A Clone’s Lament – James Bowman

The New Atlantis – The Age of Female Computers – David Skinner

The New Atlantis – Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction? – John Derbyshire

The New Atlantis – The God Meme – Charles T. Rubin

The New Atlantis – The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Biology – Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas

The New Atlantis – Biotechnology and the Spirit of Capitalism – Eric Cohen

A look at those who would elevate sloth to an art form.

Guardian Unlimited Arts | | The big 20

Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | From paper to celluloid

Show Me the Bodies – New York Times

John J. Miller on Music on National Review Online

In its most recent issue, National Review offered a list of the “top 50 conservative rock songs of all time.” [IHT Arts and Leisure]

The exhibition of Tibetan arms and armor put together at the Metropolitan Museum is indeed the first of its kind. [IHT Arts and Leisure]

Guardian Unlimited Arts | | Hallelujah – it’s a dud

TheStar.com – Seeger wit and vinegar

Telegraph | Entertainment | Why they are hooked on classical

Telegraph | Entertainment | Sound of strangeness could be the saviour of tradition