One of the basic tenets of popular culture is that the villain is always one piece away from completing his master plan. Sauron needed the One Ring. Belloq needed the Staff of Ra. Megatron needed the Allspice, or something — honestly, that movie made so little sense, my back started to hurt (I’m not...
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When I was in ninth grade, Miss Axton gave us a project. We were to build a replica of an ancient structure, and write a paper about it — why the structure was important, what it was used for, how it impacted culture, blah blah blah. For mine, I decided to do the Parthenon,...
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Let’s say you’re a scientist. You wear a lab coat, you rock the clipboard, you nudge the bridge of your glasses to keep them from sliding down. You have been in the private sector. You have delivered results. And as you toil away in your fluorescent, dust-free environment, you have one goal: To accidentally...
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April 26, 1953 To the editors of Nature: While it is not in my nature to sow discord, I find it difficult to remain silent at this juncture. The treatise by Messrs. Watson and Crick (“A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Watson J.D. and Crick F.H.C., Nature, vol. 171 pp 737-738, April 25, 1953),...
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The Florian Haarschnitt Center for Advanced Thought presents Futurismology: What Will Life Be Like In Fifty Years? We assembled some of the most progressive thinkers of our time at a retreat in the Swiss Alps. Sequestered far from interruption, our “tank of thinkers” spent two weeks debating the likely course of events over the...
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Behold, one of the strongest forces in nature: the iron-clad grip of popular fiction. The page-turner, the blockbuster, the serial drama that sends us diving for the DVR — they sink their hooks into our fleshiest bits, and keep piercing until they hit daylight on the other side. Having witnessed my Dad get a...
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