The Peacock Problem

What does evolution say about why we make art?

The Art Instinct By Denis Dutton

The Man Who Shot the Man Who Shot Lincoln

The hatter Boston Corbett was celebrated as a hero for killing John Wilkes Booth. Fame and fortune did not follow, but madness did.

A Tribute to John Updike

Belmont Park

Vibrato Wars

Elgar, served neat and unshaken, stirs up the Brits

Franklin in Paris

Founding Portraitists

The Painter’s Chair: George Washington and the Making of American Art By Hugh Howard

Visions and Revisions

Writing On Writing Well and keeping it up-to-date for 35 years

Literary Cubs, Canceling Out Each Other’s Reticence

Letters between Federal Writers’ Project cohorts Richard Wright and Nelson Algren depict a mutual admiration rare among young novelists

Debt

Locks for Lettuces

Smarter Than Dirt

The Sound of Laptops

The Terminator Comes to Wall Street

How computer modeling worsened the financial crisis and what we ought to do about it

Response to Our Winter Issue

The Peacock Problem

Does sexual selection really explain enough?

The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness By Joan Roughgarden

Paris: A Twombly Ceiling

Purpose-Driven Life

Evolution does not rob life of meaning, but creates meaning. It also makes possible our own capacity for creativity.

Second Chances, Social Forgiveness, and the Internet

We need the means, both technological and legal, to replace measures once woven into the fabric of communities

The Potency of Breathless

At 50, Godard’s film still asks how something this bad can be so good

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