“News about Google Glass is everywhere these days, and so are its critics. … Nonetheless, most agree that a smartphone-linked display and camera placed in the corner of your vision is intriguing and potentially revolutionary – and like us, they want to try it. But Glass may inadvertently disrupt a crucial cognitive capacity, with potentially dangerous consequences.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Singing Opera With Someone Else’s Lungs
Charity Tillemann-Dick was a promising student soprano when she developed a dangerous hardening of the blood vessels in her lungs. After two different double transplants, she’s back to singing – now using the lungs of a deceased middle-aged Honduran.
The Man Who Was Convinced He Was Dead
“It’s really hard to explain. I just felt like my brain didn’t exist any more. I kept on telling the doctors that the tablets weren’t going to do me any good because I didn’t have a brain. I’d fried it in the bath.”
The Essayification Of Everything
“It seems that, even in the proliferation of new forms of writing and communication before us, the essay has become a talisman of our times. What is behind our attraction to it? Is it the essay’s therapeutic properties? Because it brings miniature joys to its writer and its reader?” Chisty Wampole suggests a different explanation.
Nearly 5,000 Ancient Cave Paintings Discovered In Mexico
The 4,926 images – including more than 1,500 in a single cave – were found at 11 different sites in the northeastern state of Burgos. Scholars had not previously thought that the area in the San Carlos Mountains had been inhabited in prehistoric times.
Why Are Americans Obsessed With Germs?
“Compared with the rest of the world, Americans take personal hygiene and general disinfection to another level. … What makes us so eager to be clean? Is it noble and healthy, or should we relax a little?” Nine contributors offer their thought in this Room for Debate.
The Rise And Fall Of Charm In American Men
Benjamin Schwarz: “Most men hold charm in vague suspicion: few cultivate it; still fewer respond to it; hardly any know whether they have it; and almost none can even identify it. … Americans, especially American men, have always been, for some very good reasons, ambivalent about charm.”
Singing Along With Cicely Tyson On Broadway
Early in the second act of the current revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful, Tyson’s Carrie Watts stands up and starts singing the old hymn “Blessed Assurance”. And the audience, especially at Sunday matinees, joins right in.
John Malkovich Can Play Casanova But Couldn’t Be Him
“It would be interesting to be like Casanova, but boy, I wouldn’t want it more than a week. I don’t think I could run around for 50 years trying to tell boys from girls, wives from daughters. I don’t know if I have that tenacity.”
Granta Is Now Hemorrhaging Staff
“A slew of high-profile departures from the prestigious literary magazine and publisher Granta has left staff reeling as owner and philanthropist Sigrid Rausing steps up to take full control of the company.”