It has long been thought that the so-called “Golden Ratio” described in Euclid’sElements has “implications for numerous natural phenomena… from the leaf and seed arrangements of plants” and “from the arts to the stock market.” So writes astrophysicist Mario Livio, head of the science division for the institute that oversees the Hubble Telescope. And yet, […]
Color is an essential part of how we experience the world, both biologically and culturally. One of the earliest formal explorations of color theory came from an unlikely source — the German poet, artist, and politician Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in 1810 published Theory of Colors (public library; public domain), his treatise on the […]
Tales from the legendary hotel-slash-commune that housed Jackson Pollock, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, and Sid Vicious—told by residents like Rufus Wainwright, Betsey Johnson, R. Crumb, and Andy Warhol. Wll vanish before the city’s merchant greed, Wreckers will wreck it, and in its stead More lofty walls will swell This old […]
Tibetan Buddhist monks have created sand mandalas for over 2,500 years, as it remains one of the religion’s most beautiful and symbolic traditions. Each mandala has a center point that is surrounded by a circle, a perfectly symmetrical design of specific meaning, and an accompaniment of various religious deities and symbols. They are created as […]
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments. Language is a universal hallmark of humanity, but it sounds different in different parts of the world. On most Pacific islands and throughout Southeast Asia, words use more vowel sounds than consonants, and they’re spoken in simple syllables, […]
It is easy to feel nostalgic for the array of creative and political figures who made their mark on the East Village street, but its golden age is always ‘now’ Many thoroughfares could credibly lay claim to the title “America’s hippest street”: Alberta Street in Portland, South Congress Avenue in Austin, Valencia Street in San […]
The Nazi genocide serves as a warning we should heed in facing today’s crises, Snyder claims. But was Hitler’s targeting of Jews really an act of ‘ecological panic’? We have got the Holocaust all wrong, says Timothy Snyder in his new book, and so we have failed to learn the lessons we should have drawn […]
The author and the illusionist might seem an odd couple, but a shared interest in the afterlife made for an unlikely bond and a bitter rift. In 1920, two of the biggest celebrities of the age met for the first time. One was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famed creator of the great detective Sherlock […]