Published: Feb 21, 2012
Why is there something, rather than nothing at all? It is, perhaps, the mystery of last resort. Scientists may be at least theoretically able to trace every last galaxy back to a bump in the Big Bang, to complete the entire quantum roll call of particles and forces. But the question of why there was a Big Bang or any quantum particles at all was
Read original article Topics: Cosmology
Published: Jan 26, 2012
MUIR WOODS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Calif. -- What do you get when you bring together a groundbreaking lesbian poet, a famous Zen philosopher, the founder of a prostitutes' union and the inventor of the self-regulating filtered hot tub? The answer: Druid Heights -- a once-thriving Bay Area bohemia deep in the forest, now moldering despite the best
Read original article Topics: Cosmology
Published: Jan 13, 2012
In a 1965 essay on postwar science-fiction films Susan Sontag noted a common ingredient: a ''depersonalization'' of the characters, a kind of emotionless zombie state that occurred when their minds were taken over by aliens or robots. Some of this, she wrote, reflected the basic conditions of modern life. But it also pointed toward something new in
Read original article Topics: Cosmology
Published: Jan 09, 2012
A constellation of light bulbs glows from the stage at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, where the monologuist extraordinaire Daniel Kitson has set up his own planetarium. In ''It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later,'' which opened on Sunday night and runs through Jan. 29, Mr. Kitson maps an earthly cosmology: the points of light in two separate
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Published: Jan 08, 2012
CHARLES PIERREPONT HENRY GILBERT could shoot from the back of a galloping horse and design a mean neo-Gothic mansion. The Jewish Museum, completed in 1909 at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, is part of his string of lacy town houses along Fifth and Madison that came to define the upper-class residence. But before his success in Manhattan in the 1890s,
Read original article Topics: Cosmology
Published: Dec 25, 2011
HIP-HOP is primarily a celebration of black masculinity. Sure, there have long been significant black female and white male figures, but the majority of the conversation in hip-hop is and has always been about the actions, thoughts, feelings and ethos of black men. But this hegemony cannot last forever. Eventually the throne will have to be shared.
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Published: Dec 18, 2011
MANOHLA DARGIS As we know, it's become ritualistic for critics to whine about the end of the year being crowded with Oscar hopefuls. Oh, pity the poor movie critic forced to watch a new Martin Scorsese movie, a new David Fincher and two from Steven Spielberg in short succession! Yet while this period seems jammed with Important Movies From Harvey
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Published: Dec 11, 2011
SUNSET PARK, by Paul Auster (Picador, $15.) Unfolding after the economic collapse, Auster's novel concerns Miles Heller, a college dropout ''trashing out'' foreclosed houses in Florida. His underage girlfriend, Pilar, is mature beyond her years, but the discovery of their relationship forces Miles to flee to New York, where he hides out among a
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Published: Nov 13, 2011
THIS fall, we behold omens that will darken a year hence in the final phase of President Obama's campaign for a second term. His likely opponent, the Mormon Mitt Romney, will be a pioneer figure whatever the outcome, since no previous member of that very American church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has ever secured a
Read original article Topics: Cosmology
Published: Nov 02, 2011
You might want to think twice, if you cherish your notions of reality, before accepting a ride from Brian Greene. Step into a taxi, a Jeep, a space shuttle or even onto an escalator with this boyish Columbia University physicist and best-selling author, and you may soon find your watch acting weirdly, the landscape outside turning into a funhouse
Read original article Topics: Cosmology