Etruscans sometimes wrote boustrophedon style, in which the direction of writing alternates with each line—right-to-left, then left-to-right. Brilliant! The eye doesn’t waste time trekking back to the...
I know we’re missing out on some potential Abe Lincolns because they’d look gawky and gangly on TV.
The whole Bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man, says Greenberg. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relat...
I'm hungry enough that I started to salivate at the sight of lettuce. I repeat: lettuce.
Scrabble - The game is available in Braille. That’s a nice fact. This makes me feel better about humanity for some reason. I can’t really explain why.
My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
Like God and Duane Reade drugstores, toxins are everywhere.
Year hasn’t been observed since the time of the Temple (The Second Jewish Book of Why, p. 262). The Sabbath year is still observed in some form, but only in Israel (ibid., p. 320). DAY 44 I first lear...
To properly engage in magical thinking, I find you have to think of every possible ghastly scenario. That's the only way you outsmart fate.
After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There's something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence.
Back pain is the single most common reason people visit the doctor.
The MRI has a repertoire of noises that resemble, in no particular order: a game-show buzzer for a wrong answer, urgent knocking, a modem from 1992, a grizzly-bear growl, and a man with a raspy voice...
The Bible is so strange, so utterly bizarre, no human brain could have come up with it.
Step back for a minute. Pretend you're from Mars. From a coldly rational point of view, pedestrian helmets aren't a crazy idea.
Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn’t easy. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brai...
How do you gag the voice in your head that says, 'You don't have to go to the gym today. There's always tomorrow. C'mon, my friend, it's just one plate of curly fries. Yes, just for you!' (My inner vo...
Claque, aka canned laughter It’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s nothing new under the sun (a heavenly body, by the way, that some Indian ascetics stare at till they go blind). I knew that so...
You watch the Appalachian snake handlers on the Discovery Channel, and they look as weird as the guy on Coney Island who hammers six-inch nails into his nostrils, or Nick Nolte after a couple of vodka...
You cannot stop religion from evolving.
How much fiber should I be getting? A huge amount. The Institute of Medicine says thirty grams a day. Which is a challenge. An apple—one of the most high-fiber foods—has only three grams of fiber.
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