Why is there Twitter? One generic answer concerns SMS protocol: Twitter takes text messages (including the 140-character limit designed three decades ago by Friedrich Hillebrand to permit cell carriers to …
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The search for a gay gene has intensified since the publication in the early 90’s of the now famous research by Simon LeVay and Dean Hamer. Their findings were reconfirmed …
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The situation is fluid and rapidly changing, information is not easily available through official news agencies (which, in and of itself, is remarkable), but it appears that the formidable migratory …
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PREFATORY NOTE
A few years ago I wrote a series of short lyrical mediations about objects that appeared in a collection called The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday …
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THE WORLD TODAY appears divided into two opposing camps: the realm of Good and the empire of Evil, the free world against the world of slavery, “crusaders” vs. “martyrs.” Yet, …
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THERE ARE THOSE EXCEPTIONAL INSTANCES, in which a date or a place stands for a particular event that happened then and there. “9/11” and “Chernobyl” symbolize in a recognizable shorthand …
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SOCIAL MEDIA SUCH AS FACEBOOK, Snapchat, and Tinder were invented as part of a culture that objectifies and denigrates girls and women. It is well known that the Facebook founder …
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WE SEEK FREEDOM. Is this not the rallying cry of American democracy, endlessly repeated, endlessly intoned as its most durable credo? We seek freedom to do as we want without …
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THE BODY IS NOTHING but the outside: skin exposed, a network of sentient receivers and transmitters. All outside and nothing like “me” that would be held inside that wrapping. There …
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EVERYTHING THAT PRECEDED the announcement of a referendum on whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union was a political absurdity — demagoguery, irresponsibility, shameful concessions — with …
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