science
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Mr. Clarke, the Real Hero of Stranger Things
He’s the teacher who encourages questions beyond the class assessment, who always gets his students to open the “Curiosity Door.”
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Weekly Geekery
Fan fiction writers, rejoice: the future of TV is yours. Yoda-like lizard extracts water from sand without moving a muscle. Holy relics, bacteria, and the Ivy League reveal how to be a better liar. Why modern science rejected modernism. Hankering…
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Weekly Geekery
Los Angeles: capital of science fiction? The latest Rx craze: novels. Richard Dawkins on Robert Frost. The scariest costume yesterday? A mite. Evolutionary biologists have a grudge against Frankenstein’s bride. The future of books: a bunch of Norwegian spruce trees.
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Inquiring Minds in Saugerties, New York installed a window display with the words “Make America Hate Again,” along with a swastika, to protest Trump. Hilarity Protests ensued. Minnesota has some cozy bookstores. Barnes & Noble wants to build smaller stores with more…
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Weekly Geekery
Goethe, book reviews, and why you shouldn’t use TripAdvisor. The brother-figures of bear conservation. Barack Obama talks brain-bots and “chasing the unicorn.” Meet your future neighbors: oysters. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and 19th-century fatal fashion.
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Weekly Geekery
The plot thickens: literary fiction may not affect empathy after all. China’s solution to producing entrepreneurs? Science fiction. Kids of all races prefer black and Latinx teachers to whites. Science says: everything you learned about sexuality is wrong. Take back…
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The Rumpus Interview with Jonathon Keats
Experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats discusses Buckminster Fuller, three-wheeled cars, domed cities, climate change, and cameras with a 100-year exposure time.
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Weekly Geekery
Is HBO’s bookish Westworld poised to give science fiction the Game of Thrones treatment? Antelopes, Bollywood, climate change, Brönte. National Geographic‘s autumn book recommendations—sushi, hiking, murder, oh my! Elon Musk name-drops Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Also, we’re going to Mars?) Spotting…
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The Rumpus Interview with Bronwen Dickey
Bronwen Dickey discusses Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon, her examination of one of the most feared dog breeds, how the media changes perceptions, and what Eliza Doolittle might have to say about this.
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The Rumpus Book Club Chat with Michael Helm
The Rumpus Book Club chats with Michael Helm about his new novel After James, the line between paranoia and caution, and the use of poetry as a plot device.
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Weekly Geekery
Love = addiction. And both hijack the brain’s learning circuit. Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay, resurrected on YouTube. The top traits of bestselling books. (Hint: Not sex.) The language you speak affects your morality. Sand avalanche! In your brain!
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Weekly Geekery
Forget yoga—hallucinogenic ayahuasca is the new health cure du jour. H.G. Wells’s BFF was editor of Nature. Also from Nature: Wave goodbye to the 10,000-hours rule. Neurofiction, or stories that read your brain. Accurate AI models of existence? Not until…