Simon Cowell Stamps His Sound on Sony's Top End

The concept of “personal music” has become so embedded in modern culture that we no longer even entertain the idea of not pocketing our music and piping it directly into our brains.For those of us minted prior to the iPod age, the Sony brand is synonymous with creating and laying that foundation with its Walkman line of portable players. Clearly, much has changed since the early ’80s, and...

Read More..

Springsteen, Jay-Z put the pop in Obama rally

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Someone has to introduce the president.On Monday, the final day of the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama, however, didn’t bring along an opening act. He brought along two main acts. Bruce Springsteen. Jay-Z. Theirs wasn’t an introduction, it was pop culture moment.The Boss was spending...

Read More..

Run Well: Lessons From a Marathon Not Run

Thousands of runners who had trained for months didn’t get to run the canceled New York City Marathon this weekend. I feel their pain because four weeks ago I went through similar emotions. All that rigorous training. It felt unfair, a cruel joke. Runners train to run.My marathon plan began a year ago. After five episodes of atrial fibrillation, I lay on a gurney at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in...

Read More..

Antwerp Journal: Antwerp’s Diamond Industry Facing Challenges

Colin Delfosse for The New York TimesIndian businessmen in the diamond district of Antwerp, Belgium. ANTWERP, Belgium — Step off the train here and you cannot miss the signs on the stores: Diamond World, Diamond Gallery, Diamond Creations or simply, Diamonds. Of late, there are the banners and posters reading simply, “Antwerp Loves Diamonds.” Though this Belgian port has had a love affair...

Read More..

State Supreme Court wants Arizona donors audited

SACRAMENTO — An Arizona group was scrambling late Sunday to keep secret the individuals behind its $11-million donation to a...

Read More..

Math Problems Can Be Physically Painful

By Ian Steadman, Wired UKHow much do you hate doing sums? Long division? Fractions? Calculus?For many people the thought of these kinds of problems is horrible. Painful, even. A study by psychologists Ian Lyon and Sian Beilock has shown that that’s not hyperbole — some people who dislike math do so because the thought of working out things with numbers is experientially similar to physical...

Read More..

Recipes for Health: Quinoa and Carrot Kugel

Andrew Scrivani for The New York TimesRecently I received an e-mail from a reader describing a kugel made with carrots and quinoa that she’d tasted at a buffet dinner. “It was delicious served at room temperature, cut into cubes, which were firm in texture, sweet but not overly, and  prepared with quinoa,” she wrote. “I am wondering if you might be willing and able to conjure up the ingredients...

Read More..

Keeping 007 relevant in a changed world

NEW YORK — Early in "Skyfall," Judi Dench's M pulls aside our embattled hero, played once again with suave ennui by Daniel Craig,...

Read More..

Asteroid Belts Could Be Key to Finding Alien Life

By Ian Steadman, Wired UKIf we want to find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it might be wise to look for stars with asteroid belts similar the one in our own Solar System.According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, evolution goes faster and further when life has to make rapid changes to survive new environments — and few things have as dramatic an effect on the environment...

Read More..

Opinion: Seeing Things? Hearing Things? Many of Us Do

HALLUCINATIONS are very startling and frightening: you suddenly see, or hear or smell something — something that is not there. Your immediate, bewildered feeling is, what is going on? Where is this coming from? The hallucination is convincingly real, produced by the same neural pathways as actual perception, and yet no one else seems to see it. And then you are forced to the conclusion that something...

Read More..