I'm the chief digital writer for the Columbia Journalism Review
From Scientific American: "If you haven’t accomplished as much this summer as you had hoped to, you can blame forces far beyond your control: a few of these dog days, by one measure, are among the shortest you’ve ever lived through. For most of humanity’s history,
From SF Weekly: "A rumor had circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs. "What happened was, I was in the Army
From Boing Boing: "Autotune gets a bad rep. Sure, it's been abused by plenty of artists, notably T-Pain and Cher's "Believe" single. But used as a mild assistive, it can be a great way to punch up a piece of music. Dr. Andy
From New York magazine: "Andrew first met Matthew Christopher Pietras in September 2019 at the opening-night gala for the Metropolitan Opera. At 34, he was considerably younger than the other wealthy donors, not to mention handsome — tall, slim, and stylish. Pietras was vague about how he had made his
From Futurism: "An art installation project in Australia, titled "Revivification," has performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals. At the center of the piece is an
From Texas Monthly: "Sara Burnett had initially planned to spend only a few weeks practicing at Blue Element Freediving, a training center in the Caribbean island nation of Dominica. The area is popular among free divers, who plunge deep into open water without a scuba tank, hitting depths that
From Amusing Planet: "During the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, the border between British Canada and upstate New York saw some of the fiercest fighting, much of which took place around Lake Champlain. This freshwater lake situated across the US-Canada border provided the British a direct
From The Conversation: "In a routine blood test that turned extraordinary, French scientists have identified the world’s newest and rarest blood group. The sole known carrier is a woman from Guadeloupe whose blood is so unique that doctors couldn’t find a single compatible donor. The discovery of
From The Smithsonian: "In the nearly 200 years since his mummy’s arrival at the Leeds City Museum in northern England, an ancient Egyptian priest named Nesyamun has slowly but surely revealed his secrets. Employed as a high-ranking priest and scribe at the Karnak state temple in Thebes, Nesyamun
From Wikipedia: "John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Aerojet. In 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, a religious movement founded by English occultist Aleister Crowley. Parsons
From Eccentric Culinary History: "Prior to World War Two, pizza was barely known in the United States outside of a few Italian enclaves in the Northeast. For all of the praise heaped upon Lombardi’s in New York City, until the war, few people north of Houston Street had
From Lori Weiss at HuffPo: "Somewhere in West Tennessee, not far from Graceland, nine women – or "The 9 Nanas," as they prefer to be called – gather in the darkness of night. At 4am they begin their daily routine – a ritual that no one, not even their husbands,