In MIT’s Technology Review, Antonio Regalado reports that paralyzed patients are participating in long-term studies of how putting implants in the brain to create brain-controlled prosthetics and computers may help paralyzed people in the future. Jan Scheuermann, 54, is one of these patients. After she awoke from her brain surgery, she was able to control […]
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
When Gamers Assumed the Role of the Antihero
At Gamespot, an excerpt from David Kushner’s book Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto, which details the origin of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Initially, designers devised a game where the player would assume the role of a police officer who had to obey traffic lights and avoid hitting pedestrians. Players found the […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Would Happen if Life on Earth Started Over Again?
At Nautilus, science reporter Zach Zorich examines the following question: If the world began again, would life as we know it exist? In science and evolution, this is a discussion of convergence vs. contingency. Scientists like Richard Lenski, an evolutionary biologist at Michigan State University, are conducting experiments in the lab to test out their […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Real Life Injuries in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'
It’s been 40 years since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre hit theaters and shocked moviegoers with its violent scenes. Texas Monthly has resurfaced their story from 2004 by John Bloom about the making of the film, which was made on a budget of $60,000 (about $290K, adjusted for inflation). Here, Bloom describes the injuries the cast […]
Posted inBooks, Quotes
On Watching a Person Deteriorate
In the Guardian, an adaptation of The Iceberg, a memoir by Marion Coutts about her husband’s last months after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. She writes: “There is going to be destruction: the obliteration of a person, his intellect, his experience and his agency. I am to watch it. This is my part.” 13 […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Problem With 'Fan Service' in Television
At PopMatters, Anita Felicelli discusses why TV shows get ruined when they’re written and produced with their fans in mind rather than for their own sake as pieces of creative work: We know that television writers read fan responses on Twitter, that some of them read blogs and speculation. They know what fans want because […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The People Who Are Impossible for Lipreaders to Decipher
Rachel Kolb has been deaf since birth and in Stanford magazine, she writes about learning how to lipread and describes what it’s like to read the lips of people with accents or who over-enunciate.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
We Are More Dangerous to Sharks Than They Are to Us
In the Toronto Star, Sandro Contenta travels to the Bahamas to attend “SharkSchool” where a man named Erich Ritter teaches a one-week course on how to swim safely with sharks. Over the course of his reporting, Contenta learns that 63 people have been killed by sharks in the past decade, while scientists have estimated that […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why So Many Teams at the World Cup Have Players Who Share a Birthday
At BBC Magazine, an examination of the “birthday paradox” using the World Cup as an example. The birthday paradox goes like this: Mathematically, in any group of 23 people there is a 50% chance that two people will share a birthday. At the World Cup, there are 32 squads with 23 players on each team. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Vera Nabokov, Eugen Boissevain, Leonard Woolf: On Spouses Who Supported Their Famous Partner's Writing Careers
At the Atlantic, Koa Beck writes about the spouses of famous writers who supported their partner’s writing careers, often devoting their lives to it. Vera Nabokov epitomized this: She not only performed the duties of cleaning and cooking expected of her as a wife in her era, but also worked as her husband’s “round-the-clock editor, […]
