Category: ideas

City leaders in Philadelphia are promoting “an eminently sensible proposal to extend the existing city street grid down to the edge of the Delaware River. The new street network would break up the central waterfront’s large, formerly industrial tracts into manageable blocks that could be developed into something resembling a real Philadelphia neighborhood.” But developers who view the waterfront as prime space for closed, gated luxury communities are working furiously to scuttle the proposal. Inga Saffron says that the debate comes down to a simple truth: city streets are (and should remain) public space.

“Scientists are analysing the striking sunsets painted by Turner and dozens of other artists to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. By working out how the climate varied naturally in the past they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming.”

“Phonetic symbolism, as researchers call it, refers to phonemes – small units of sound – and the meaning each one conveys. Basically, sounds have meanings that are separate from the word that contains them. This symbolism may have an impact on consumers’ choices, according to a study at the University of Texas at San Antonio.”

“When you think of it, the time compression between reading and writing is quite astonishing: the thriller that lasts for half a plane journey will have taken half a year to write. By contrast, audio and video are not lossy compression. They are lossy expansion. They take more time to convey less meaning.”

“We are living in a time of exciting discoveries in biblical archeology. We are also living in a time of widespread biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing. The tools of modern archeology, from magnetometers to precise excavation methods, offer a growing opportunity to illuminate some of the intriguing mysteries surrounding the Bible, one of the foundations of western civilization. Yet the amateurs are taking in the public’s money to support ventures that offer little chance of furthering the cause of knowledge.”

“As digital-storage capacities reach seemingly boundless proportions, some thinkers are becoming nervous about the unintended consequences of memory technology. New forms of memory are permanent and accessible from anywhere. As their reach grows, scholars are asking if now – perhaps for the first time in human history – we need to find ways to forget.”

“The once untouchable Alps are being turned into a huge and haughty playground for the rich, featuring luxury tower blocks, pyramids, and revolving hotels, as Switzerland’s cantons seek to produce ever bigger and better tourist attractions in a bid to outdo each other. Already home to the highest cable car in Europe, the smaller neighbour to the Matterhorn is soon to be topped with a 117 metre steel and glass pyramid which will take it to a height of 4,000 metres.”

“Linguists believe half the languages in the world will be extinct by the end of the century. The 80 major languages such as English, Russian and Mandarin are spoken by about 80 per cent of the global population, while the 3,500 linguistic minnows have just 0.2 per cent of the world keeping them alive. The pace of language extinction we’re seeing, it’s really unprecedented in human history.”

“The world lost its most famous bird brain this month: Alex, an African gray parrot who lived in a Brandeis laboratory and possessed a vocabulary of nearly 150 words. Yet as remarkable as Alex was – he could identify colors and shapes – he was not alone. The songs of starlings display a sophisticated grammar once thought the sole domain of human thinking.”