Monthly Archives: November 2010
The Republic of Heaven
…we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere. – from Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass In an interview, Pullman explains:
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Christopher Hitchens, incandescent
(Update: The original clip I linked to has been withdrawn due to a copyright claim, and the full debate now hides behind a paywall; apparently the generous Christians at Prestonwood are now charging for Hitchens’ atheist view. Perhaps they’re not … Continue reading
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Science and poetry, cont’d: “What it takes to dazzle us”
from “Mt. Lemmon, Steward Observatory, 1990″ by Alison Hawthorne Deming What it takes to dazzle us, masters of dazzle, all of us here together at the top of the world, is a night without neon or mercury lamps. Black sheen … Continue reading
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What do we owe our tribes? On identity beyond ethnicity
I’m a big fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and hardly need an excuse to post about him on this blog. Here he is, talking to students at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland and revisiting some of his favorite … Continue reading
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Wizard loves science
Daniel Radcliffe sings Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements”: And for those who, like his audience, don’t remember the original (gasp!), a refresher: (h/t Tor.com)
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A.C. Newman takes on “Take On Me”
The test of a good song is if it works even without a cool video of animated pencil sketches. Yeah, it’s a good song. (h/t Bob Cesca)
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Another triumph for science!
I love it. Via the New York Times: It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. The answer is: very elegantly, and not at … Continue reading
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“Consider Humanism”
I’d always admired the British Humanist Association’s recent PR campaign — which famously put ads on buses that read “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” — and wondered if anything like that could ever take … Continue reading
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The infinite city, cont’d: Tony Judt’s “Endless New York”
Tony Judt muses on the twilight of the great cities, and on what makes New York a “world city”*: We are experiencing the decline of the American age. But how does national or imperial decay influence the lifecycle of a … Continue reading
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“I stepped out of a supernova. And so did you.”
An astounding 15-minute rhapsody: Add this to the list of voices celebrating the mind-boggling awesomeness of the natural world. No gods required. (h/t The Meming of Life)
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