Automattic

The shocking theft of the Mona Lisa, in August 1911, appeared to have been solved 28 months later, when the painting was recovered.

The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age

Solving the “last-mile” problem in public transportation

A lofty idea is blossoming in cities around the world, where acres of potential green space lie overhead.

“My own plan for the coming fourteen months is to knock on doors and stuff envelopes. Maybe even to wear a button. To try to accrete with others into a demographically significant mass. To try extra hard to exercise patience, politeness, and imagination on those with whom I disagree. Also to floss more.”

John Madden has burst upon the American scene as few others in sport, but contrary to his bull-in-a-beer-ad image, he loves nothing more than good quiet conversation, and his skill as a communicator is the key to his success both as a football coach and as a broadcaster.

Alanis haters relished pointing out how many of the examples of irony in the lyrics to “Ironic” were, in fact, not really ironic. On this point I’m going to defend Morissette, if only because these are the same awful people that circle typos in newspapers and mail the clippings anonymously to editors with smug putdowns […]

At an orchid show in New York last year, I heard the same story over and over—how one orchid in the kitchen led to a dozen, and then to a back-yard greenhouse, and then, in some cases, to multiple greenhouses and collecting trips to Asia and Africa and an ever-expanding budget to service this desire. […]

Mubarak has suggested that he will never willingly step down. In 2006, he told Egypt’s Parliament that he would continue to serve “as long as there is in my chest a heart that beats and I draw breath.” … One part of the system that has sustained Mubarak in power is Egypt’s Emergency Law, which […]

The Dogtown kids started applying their surfing techniques to concrete, riding low to the ground with their arms outstretched for balance, skating with such intensity that they often destroyed their homemade boards in a single session. “We were just trying to emulate our favorite Australian surfers,” Tony Alva says, explaining the genesis of their new […]