Satyajit Das: On Reading – Textual Pleasures
On the role of reading, particulalry for book lovers.
Read more...Category Archives: Curiousities
“You Are My Friend”: Early Androids and Artificial Speech
Centuries before audio deepfakes and text-to-speech software, inventors in the eighteenth century constructed androids with swelling lungs, flexible lips, and moving tongues to simulate human speech.
Read more...Book Review: This Is Your Brain On Nature
In “Nature and the Mind,” Marc Berman uses neuroscience to show how interacting with nature benefits mental health.
Read more...Dissecting My Recent Argument (Are Error Theories Offensive?)
How do people consume arguments or make sense of them in a discursive environment devoid of generally-accepted notions of what makes an argument good or successful?
Read more...Coffee Break: Beware the Jargon, Chocolate(!), Arsenic Life Final Update, Death Becomes Us, and the Scopes Trial,
Part the First: Beware Scientific Jargon. But everyone here already knows that. Nevertheless, this is a perpetual challenge for every scientist and other scholar who wants to be understood by our fellow citizens without “dumbing it down.” Scientific jargon can be ‘satisfying’ — but misleading. Jargon works especially well for those of my tribe who […]
Read more...Skyscrapers of Babel: How Ancient Mesopotamia Shaped the Modern City
In the early 20th century, architects and artists like Hugh Ferriss drew on the myths and monuments of ancient Babylon to imagine futuristic skylines—melding ziggurats with modernism in a visionary blend of the past and the possible.
Read more...The Incredible Impact of Ozzy Osbourne, from Black Sabbath to Ozzfest to 30 Years of Retirement Tours
We depart from our usual programming to commemorate the death of Ozzy Osbourne.
Read more...Can This Industry Be Saved? The Case of Natural Diamonds
The once prized diamond is now merely a natural diamond and losing ground to its cheaper manufactured cousins.
Read more...Satyajit Das: On Cinema – Francis Ford Coppola’s Operas & Chamber Pieces
A break from our regular programming in the form of revisiting some of Francis Ford Coppola’s classics.
Read more...Coffee Break: Ancient Food Facts, Cancer Therapy, the Conscious Brain, and Biohacking with Biotech…Plus Thomas Jefferson
On this Independence Day in one country in North America a few notes on life outside current politics, scientific and otherwise. Part the First: The Archaeology of Food Is Fascinating. Having read about Roman eating habits over the years I have wondered about two things, fish sauce and the dormouse. Now we know which fish […]
Read more...Holiday Special: Dimash Sings Edith Piaf’s Hymne à l’Amour
mash, who has credibly (and often) been called the world’s best singer, does it again.
Read more...Coffee Break: Funding Medical Education, A Human Ancestor, Tardigrades to the Rescue, Trashing the Earth, Plus MAHA and Measles
Part the First: Financing Professional Education in the United States. College costs too much in the United States. Professional School costs way to much. Up until the present – who knows what will happen next as the broad attacks on American universities continue – graduate education at the PhD level in traditional disciplines in the […]
Read more...At Antarctica’s Midwinter, a Look Back at the Frozen Continent’s Long History of Dark Behavior
Sunlight is beginning to return to Antarctica, but are there warnings for us from the “Madhouse at the End of the Earth”?
Read more...Coffee Break: Working Class Life in 17th-Century Italy, Science in Decline, AI and Scientific Understanding, and Neanderthal Art
Part the First. Tales from the Crypt. Subtitled The lives of 17th century Milan’s working poor – their health, diet, and drug habits – emerge from thousands of bodies buried under a public hospital. This article appeared in Science on 1 May 2025: In 1456, the Duke of Milan established a medical institution dedicated to […]
Read more...Archeologists Join Geologists in the Quest to Define the Age of Humans
A new archeology is being developed based on evidence of human activity in the Earth’s sedimentary record, and archeologists are helping to define the Anthropocene as a new stage in the geological record.
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