Too Much Magic, Too Little Social Friction: Why Objects Shouldn’t Be Enchanted
Magic’s unintended consequences.
Science & Technology
"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein
Prying: Jhave on Tender Claws’ New App
Jhave on "Pry," an interactive multimedia fiction — an iOS app by Tender Claws, the duo Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman.
In Praise of Dynamic Duos
Temma Ehrenfeld on Joshua Wolf Shenk's "Powers of Two": Creative work is in any case rough, and two are better than one.
Don’t Eat This Marshmallow: Cooling the Fever for Self-Control
"Like a real marshmallow, like any of the temptations offered children in his now-famous experiment, Mischel’s new book — The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control — is a trigger for our desire."
Aristocrats of “Merit”
Tyler Cowen’s "Average Is Over"
Of Good Horses and Bad Science
Steve Jones's "The Serpent's Promise" is not just a “retelling” of the Bible, but a critique of religion and a clarion call for science to replace it in human affairs.
OkCupid’s XOXO for Big Surveillance
Love in the time of lab rats.
Muttnik: Canine Rocketeers in the USSR
Rigged with a faulty cooling system, Sputnik 2 was a lemon and killed Laika in three hours, frying her like Icarus.
Evolution Between the Sofa Cushions
Life has evolved its way around our pesticides, antibiotics, and chemotherapies.
A Labyrinth of Terror Made of Coral and a Fragile Global Wonder
Coal meets coral: what could possibly go wrong?
On Risk and Personal Belief
Fear paralyzes, irrationality kills.
The Manipulators: Facebook’s Social Engineering Project
The revelation that Facebook manipulates user experience to study human behavior heralds a new stage in the history of the Internet.
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