Nico Muhly reviews Beyoncé http://t.co/Y8GLJaGlPO

I wrote a piece on why one should, despite everything, make new year's resolutions: http://t.co/EB1Kj9m60V

When he walked into the mayor’s office 12 years ago, businessman and billionaire Michael Bloomberg took charge of a damaged city. The World Trade Center was a windblown construction site, barely cleared after the attacks on Sept. 11. Tourists were afraid to come to the city; residents were afraid to…

About halfway into the three-hour flight from Delhi to Tashkent, I fear the plane will begin to spin anti-clockwise and spiral down. This is because almost every passenger from the right and middle sections of the plane has risen and crowded into the left aisle, with some actually crouched above…

The NYT obit of Nelson Mandela http://t.co/1zA3JyjS4l

Given all the faces you see glued to computers, tablets, and cell phones, you might think that people watch much less television than they used to. You would be wrong. According to Nielsen, Americans on average consume nearly five hours of TV every day, a number that has actually gone up since the…

Walter Isaacson ’74, a member of the Board ofOverseers and biographer of Apple’s Steve Jobs and others, is writing a book about the great inventors of the digital era. He shared this section on the Harvard undergraduate years of Bill Gates’77, LL.D. ’07, co-founder of Microsoft, who now runs the…

China competes to be the world's largest art market, but it's flooded with forgeries http://t.co/98WBafSo6S

When Gavin Hood told Orson Scott Card that he planned to adapt Card’s science-fiction classic Ender’s Game for the big screen, the author replied with a familiar refrain: “Good luck, kid.” Card was done trying to bring his book to the screen. If someone else wanted to spend years of his life…

Balthazar may look like a rustic bistro, but behind the scenes, it’s a highly efficient, well-oiled potato-chipping machine. Multimedia See More Videos » Marvin Orellana for The New York Times 7:05 a.m. — A prep cook cutting herbs for lunch service. Marvin Orellana for The New York Times 7:21 a.m. —…

Alfonso Cuarón, photographed by Platon Photo: Platon Against a black screen, these words appear first. “At 600 km above planet Earth, the temperature fluctuates between +258 and -148 degrees Fahrenheit. There is nothing to carry sound. No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.” The…

DISCLAIMER: I was only allowed to attend Corey's birthday party under the condition that he have final edit of whatever I write. Below is the text approved by Corey Feldman: You probably know Corey Feldman from classic movies like Lost Boys, Stand By Me, and the Goonies . But for the last year or…

What is the future of #NYC's creative community? Can we sustain it? David Byrne writes for @ArtistsReport: http://t.co/y2FHJbvxmq

Remember that crazy story about the dude in Mississippi who mailed ricin to Obama and then tried to frame some other dude in Mississippi for the crime? Well, as Wells Tower discovered when he traveled to Tupelo and started poking around, the story is a thousand times crazier than you thought Spend a…

Life is a euphemism for social climbing. There’s no shame in deliberately scaling the social ladder. That’s evolution. We are social animals, and we thrive in the company of others. Finding the best others we can is part of the natural-selection mechanism, and it’s far safer than rock climbing. And…

Excerpted from Hanging Man I carry the fresh tea back into the room. Weiwei pauses, his hand resting on his dog’s back. “You know, sometimes they actually tried to make my conditions better,” he says quietly, almost to himself. “Once, after two days I couldn’t shit. Normally, every day I shit.…

Published: July 2013 From glue-covered sticks in Egypt hang two lives, and a question: How can we stop the slaughter of songbirds migrating across the Mediterranean? By Jonathan Franzen Photograph by David Guttenfelder In a bird market in the Mediterranean tourist town of Marsa Matruh, Egypt, I was…

Why the billable hour no longer makes economic sense: http://t.co/huzVgmKpgh

In the 1970s, archaeologist Peter Bogucki was excavating a Stone Age site in the fertile plains of central Poland when he came across an assortment of odd artefacts. The people who had lived there around 7,000 years ago were among central Europe's first farmers, and they had left behind fragments of…

⋆ Rec Recommend this Post 2 The sun has not risen yet over Garza, a tiny fishing village on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula, but already there is movement. On one side of the town’s dirt road, the tide folds itself over the shore, and a monkey howls from behind the pink blossoms of a roble beech tree.…

"The Secret War" On NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander and "his own secret military": http://t.co/AgEIVFW3f0 (by James Bamford, @wired)

In the summer of 1977, a fire swept across the wilderness of interior Alaska, west of Mount McKinley. Tundra burned to rock; 345,000 acres of forest — more than 530 square miles — disappeared in flames. When the smoke cleared, it left behind a weird scar on the map, a vast, charred crater littered…

A few months ago I was on this Jet Blue flight from New York to Burbank. And I like Jet Blue, not just because of the prices. They have this terminal at JFK that I think is really nice. I think it might be the nicest terminal in the country, although if you want to see some good airports, you’ve got…

News & Culture Heart of Sharkness It was a show of unprecedented aggression in a surfers' paradise: ten shark attacks in the past two years, three of them fatal. Now the surfers are biting back, calling for a posse to hunt and kill the offending animals. Bucky McMahon paddles straight into the…

News & Culture My Gucci Addiction In the past few years, I've bought eighty-one leather jackets. Dozens of boots and leather gloves. I've purchased pants that cost $5,000. I own a $22,000 coat. This winter I took a tour of Milan's Fashion Week (all expenses paid by Gucci, in appreciation of my many,…

I t is best to use a well-made bed or the floor, so long as you have a large, smooth, clear surface, a canvas, if you will. It is best to start early, to take your time, to mentally map out (a maze of nerves like tangled alleys, footpaths, avenues) the possibilities, the contingencies. You must have…

if you're interested in Google Glass, you should read this piece from Steve Mann, the original cyborg: http://t.co/XKSvhWzCh9

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From: Tomas Young I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of…

"Cheetos snacks let them do that." I think we've found the extinction filter Bostrom was looking for. http://t.co/61YKs38jZc

GQ Style Grooming Women Entertainment Culture Video Subscribe Now Get the magazine Get Even More GQ this month 12 Issues for $12 Let's do it Newsletter Search Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy Star of Texas How Sasha Lane Went From Spring Break to Sex Scenes With Shia LaBeouf By…

Nick Tosches: The ESQ&A The writer talks about his new book, fear, Moby-Dick , opium, booze, and the weather Most Popular version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"? By Nicholas Guerin/Contour by Getty Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Published in the January 2013 issue Nick Tosches has…

Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language, in fact it's the 3rd most commonly spoken language in the world (after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish). Interestingly enough it's the number 1 second language used worldwide - which is why the total number of people who speak…

December 20th, 2012 The interior is European, neo-classical. Sofas and loveseats are arranged loosely in sections around low tables. The bar is tucked into a corner. The atmosphere is unhurried and muted, and yet Club Sachi (not its real name), a hostess club with a long tradition in the Ginza…

Celebrity The Well-Hung Boy Next Door Men aren't porn stars. Not really. They're extras. They're props. They're stand-ins for guys everywhere. But not Mr. James Deen. Just by being, well, average (or let's say larger than average), Deen has gotten huge (oops). And what's even stranger is who he's…

Gagosian Gallery John Currin: Patch and Pearl , 2006 Post-Darwinian Experiments in Consciousness “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I mean, my sisters get pregnant looking at a cologne ad. They get pregnant in pollen season.” For six months they had been trying to conceive, and still her…

Joshua Foer: 'What if, instead of tabbing over to the web browser in search of some nugget of gossip or news, we could scratch the itch by engaging in a meaningful activity, such as learning a…