Science's greatest advances occur on the frontiers, at the interface between ignorance and knowledge, where the most profound questions are posed. There's no better way to assess the current condition of science than listing the questions that science cannot answer. "Science," Gross declares, "is shaped by ignorance."The counterintuitive yet fascinating title of this project is, also counterintuitively, inspiring. The list of top 25 questions make you wanna grab a lab coat and write a grant proposal - or at least read about those that are wearing those coats and spending that grant money already:
There have been times, though, when some believed that science had paved over all the gaps, ending the age of ignorance. When Science was born, in 1880, James Clerk Maxwell had died just the year before, after successfully explaining light, electricity, magnetism, and heat. Along with gravity, which Newton had mastered 2 centuries earlier, physics was, to myopic eyes, essentially finished. Darwin, meanwhile, had established the guiding principle of biology, and Mendeleyev's periodic table--only a decade old--allowed chemistry to publish its foundations on a poster board. Maxwell himself mentioned that many physicists believed the trend in their field was merely to measure the values of physical constants "to another place of decimals."
Are we alone in the universe?
…Alone, in all that space? Not likely. Just do the numbers: Several hundred billion stars in our galaxy, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe, and 150 planets spied already in the immediate neighborhood of the sun. That should make for plenty of warm, scummy little ponds where life could come together to begin billions of years of evolution toward technology-wielding creatures like ourselves. No, the really big question is when, if ever, we'll have the technological wherewithal to reach out and touch such intelligence. With a bit of luck, it could be in the next 25 years…
The packets were problematic: You had to blend the herbs with both mayonnaise and buttermilk to create the dressing, and very few households kept a spare carton of buttermilk in the fridge. But the Hensons' product sold reasonably well, and in 1972, the Clorox Company bought the Hidden Valley Ranch brand for $8 million.And now, some gratuitous Toothpaste for Dinner:
Before ranch could become a national favorite, however, the scientists at Clorox had to reformulate the original recipe and make it easier to use. First, the great minds behind Pine-Sol and Liquid-Plumr added butter flavoring to the seasoning so home chefs could make the dressing with plain milk. But the real breakthrough came in 1983, with the debut of bottled—or, in the lingo of the dressing industry, "shelf stable"—Hidden Valley Ranch. At that time, more and more dressings were being sold in nonrefrigerated bottles; today, according to the market-research firm Mintel, shelf-stable dressings account for 82 percent of sales in the $1.7 billion industry. Ranch presented a serious challenge, because its high dairy content makes it susceptible to quick spoilage. But Clorox managed to add the right blend of preservatives to give the dressing a shelf life of approximately 150 days. (The science behind Clorox's innovation is secret, though it's a safe bet that Steve Henson's original recipe didn't call for calcium disodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate.)
…It has a nasty habit of throwing up its Friskies filet and pate all over the apartment. Never on an easily cleanable surface either. No, I always come home from work to find piles of barf on the leather couch, the Oriental rug and the shag rug in the bathroom (that one we had to throw out). Last week was in the nineties. What a joy it was for me to come home to my apartment and enter an abode smelling of hot tuna and stomach bile that had been festering in the 80 degree apartment all day. When I opened the door the fumes it me like a punch in the face.
Roy’s multifaceted performance has caused some controversy among his peers. In 2004, in a Los Angeles paper, Eugene Pidgeon, an actor and writer turned labor activist for dwarf performers, published a manifesto entitled “Little People’s Progress.” In it, he addressed two key problems: a dearth of decent roles for little people, and the threat to their livelihoods posed by animation technology. “My argument is that if you’re going to computer-generate us out of roles that we have traditionally taken, you have to provide others,” Pidgeon said over the phone from Hollywood. “Oompas, trolls, elves, cupids are just going to disappear en masse.”
TOPEKA, KS—When Marybeth Witty stumbled upon her husband Dale watching a pornographic video on the internet, she knew something was wrong. Instead of looking at images of nude high school cheerleaders and young shaved lesbians as he often had in the past, the 37-year old auto parts salesman was taking in hot guy-on-guy action. "As soon as I saw what he was looking at I knew something was different," said Marybeth, a part-time manicurist who enjoys scrapbooking. "This was not the same Dale."This news couldn't have come at a more providential time - my grandfather is about to get a kidney from a Republican.
You have to understand, the fart is so rotten that you can't even pretend you don't notice it. It's unavoidable. It's like a human stink bomb. So of course everybody is standing in line wanting answers to the same question which is, "Who farted?" Everybody starts looking at each other like they are playing the board game Clue. This is actually my favorite part of going to Costco with my mom. She should get an Academy Award for every time she farts and then plays like she didn't do it. She'll start lookin' around, everybody else is looking at eachother, it's basically like a game of Texas Hold 'Em. Some people even become animated and start pulling their shirts up over their noses. My mom just looks around like, "Oh dear, who farted?" She knows it's her! The least she can do is apologize.
Seven years ago Reginald King was lying in a hospital bed recovering from bypass surgery when he first heard the music.Whenever I read about an illness as fascinating and freakish as this one, I’m afraid my own body - bored with its pedestrian gastroenterological mishaps - will spontaneously develop a similar malady. Although, with my luck, my brain would play “Hollaback Girl” in a continuous loop until I managed to drive a wooden spoon handle deep enough into my left nostril.
It began with a pop tune, and others followed. Mr. King heard everything from cabaret songs to Christmas carols. "I asked the nurses if they could hear the music, and they said no," said Mr. King, a retired sales manager in Cardiff, Wales.
"I got so frustrated," he said. "They didn't know what I was talking about and said it must be something wrong with my head. And it's been like that ever since."
When John Dean published his book "Worse Than Watergate" in the spring of 2004, it seemed rank hyperbole: an election-year screed and yet another attempt by a Nixon alumnus to downgrade Watergate crimes by unearthing worse "gates" thereafter. But it's hard to be dismissive now that my colleague Judy Miller has been taken away in shackles for refusing to name the source for a story she never wrote. No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.He goes on to call Time a bunch of punk-ass chumps. Or words to that effect.
The thing I like best about Lil' Kim is her delicate grasp of decorum and modesty.The two women who run and write this blog sound like more clever, more biting Joan and Melissa Riverses. And their posts never fail to address the surreal nature of celebrity worship alongside the oftimes less-than-glamorous nature of celebrity fashion. Lines are crossed on a regular basis - but they seem to argue with their demeanor "haven't outfits like these pushed us over the edge? Don't we have an obligation to humanity to respond?"
"Dear Ben and Girl:
I am writing a note from my very important tour of venues that don't make me sing more than three songs, which Marc says is my limit, because I am filled with glee. Because, aha, lookit here! You will be shocked to learn that, even if you have the Bennifer II, it is I who has the Electric Boogaloo! The flatness of my abs makes fireworks ejaculate! Good luck getting your stretch marks to have that effect on Ben, girlie!
Oh, and have fun wearing caftans, while I am in daring gold lame harness-looking-thingies that I had George Lucas make me so that I would look like a lounge singer in that alien bar from Episode IV: Jedi From The Block, or whatever that thing was that the kids love. Hip! I am hip. I tried to sew cinnamon rolls onto my head for the costume, but they made Marc cry and go binge on peas. Sometimes I don't understand him, but then I realize that's because he is choking on something and I have to Heimlich some embalming fluid out of his chest. I don't know how that keeps getting in there! But that has nothing to do with you and your stupid bloated uterus, nor my super hot capri pants with a big X that marks exactly where you can BITE me, Special Agent Sydney Crisco! Ha ha ha!
Now shut up and let me stop writing. It's time for me to stop doing my Nutcracker ballet -- wait, why does that always make Marc giggle? Ben Assfleck, why does Marc always say how appropriate that is? Ben?..."
Go on over and wish 'em a happy birthday.
...the essence of Dahl is his willingness to let children triumph over adults. He is a modern writer of fairy tales, who intuitively understands the sort of argument that Bruno Bettelheim made in his 1976 book, “The Uses of Enchantment.” Children need the dark materials of fairy tales because they need to make sense—in a symbolic, displaced way—of their own feelings of anger, resentment, and powerlessness. Children also benefit from learning about violence and brutishness in fairy tales, Bettelheim writes, for it counters the “widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in our life is due to our natures—the propensity of all men for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly.” Many fairy tales—and most of Dahl’s work—are complex narratives of wish fulfillment. They teach the reader, Bettelheim writes, that “a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence—but if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.” Or, in any case, this is a hopeful fantasy which sustains us all.I know some folks will like the lighter, slightly less loony, more musical Gene Wilder take on Willy Wonka. But I'd argue that if the new film is closer to Dahl's work in tone, it will benefit, like chocolate, from being darker.
Scholastic has closely policed the companies with which it works to produce and distribute the book. It requires many of them and their customers, including librarians and the managers of individual stores, to sign affidavits promising that they will not release the book prematurely and will undertake all necessary security efforts.At each of Amazon.com's five order-fulfillment centers, for example, the books are kept in a restricted area that workers need a special pass to enter, where they are watched by security guards and are not allowed to carry anything in or out.
Needless to say, with the way the books have been expanding, there's no need for a cavity search. Though I'm sure some people have thought about it.
How often to you get to say to yourself, while trying to get your bearings in an unfamiliar setting, "Well, I'll just follow the guy with the lobster codpiece."I miss you, I love you, New York, and every hour of Sara, besides.
Science is hot.
Dorothy Parker once wrote that the characters in James Thurber's cartoons looked like "unbaked cookies." The Webcomic Toothpaste for Dinner tends to make even the doughiest Thurber look like photorealism. The characters all have oblong heads, three-fingered hands, and stacked eyes like flounders.
They are noseless and earless and always on the brink of perspectival disaster. The handwritten text that sometimes dominates the drawings often flirts with illegibility. The art is so bad it suggests some kind of tragic and inspiring back story: an artist soldiering bravely on after losing his thumbs in a bear attack or a factory accident.
While visiting friends in Detroit the summer after my sophomore year of high school, we happened upon a garage sale. Looking for something to do while waiting for our other friend Hayato to get off work, we pulled in and picked about the old jelly glasses and board games - and came upon a table full of old New Yorkers. This was back when I thought Garrison Keillor was one of the literary lights of the age, and had bought the occasional issue in hopes that one of his stories would appear inside. The dates on the covers corresponded with a time during which he'd contributed a great deal. This was pre-Remnick, pre-Brown, when the fiction was up front - and lots of it - certainly more than what appears now.
You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature.Just know that I am a believer. And that He is a wise and just pasta, indeed. [via BB]
Today is a special day in my life as it marks the release of my very first solo album TheFutureEmbrace. For over 17 years I have been proud to represent Chicago as an artist through my words and music, and am continually humbled by the undying love that I have been shown from this city as one of its native sons...Joe? Joe? You cracked your head on the floor there pretty hard just now. Are you okay? Joe? Wake UP, Joe!When I played the final Smashing Pumpkins show on the night of December 2, 2000, I walked off the Metro stage believing that I was forever leaving a piece of my life behind. I naively tried to start a new band, but found that my heart wasn't in it. I moved away to pursue a love that I once had but got lost. So I moved back home to heal what was broken in me, and to my surprise I found what I was looking for. I found that my heart is in Chicago, and that my heart is in The Smashing Pumpkins.
For a year now I have walked around with a secret, a secret I chose to keep. But now I want you to be among the first to know that I have made plans to renew and revive The Smashing Pumpkins. I want my band back, and my songs, and my dreams. In this desire I feel I have come home again.
An Arkansas judge has granted a divorce to a Fouke man whose wife allegedly plotted to have him killed earlier this year. The ruling ends the volatile 13-year marriage between James Edward Byrd and Sherry Dawn Byrd, who is awaiting trial on charges of criminal attempt to commit capital murder.It's sad when two kids just can't make it work. [thanks, Mary Elizabeth!]
Dance Dance Immolation is an adaptation of the popular arcade video game Dance Dance Revolution, but with fire! Basically, you play DDR; when you do well, the computer shoots big propane blasts up into the air. When you do poorly, it shoots you in the face with flamethrowers. Yes, you, as in your actual corporeal body. And yes, flamethrowers, like the kind that are on fire.Disco inferno, indeed. (Sorry. Couldn't help it.) [via BB]
The Turkish film industry has a proud (well, actually shameless) tradition of remaking Hollywood classics on a budget that wouldn't pay for lunch for a typical Hollywood movie crew. Now you can host your own Mystery Science Theatre party with these incredibly awful and hilarious rip-offs from the Turkey film factories.Sweet, sweet candy. I'm waiting for their version of "Episode I." I'm betting it couldn't be any worse than the original.
SEE . . . The Tin Man portrayed as a fruity homosexual!
SEE . . . E.T. played by a midget wearing a garbage bag!
SEE . . . The most incredible spray of pea-soup puke in the history of the cinema!
SEE . . . Darth Vader enter his space chamber with his evil robot, an upside-down garbage can on top of a garbage can with a water cooler and a police siren on top of that.
