Afflictor: Thinking “American Idol” has found its new judge.
- Old Prints Articles: Freak show attraction sells his skeleton (1890) + John L. Sullivan opponent gets a close shave (1889).
- Classic Photograph: Telephone Newspapers, Just Pennies A Day (1901).
- Featured Videos: Muhammad Ali “boxes” Rocky Marciano, with the aid of a computer (1970) + Slavoj Žižek reacts to stimuli + Mechanical engineer Chris Gerdes discusses robotic, driverless race cars + Can the design sense of termites aid roboticists? + A robot hand that can be worn like a glove + Footage of early bioengineering research (1977). + To Tell the Truth episodes with Mad magazine founder William M. Gaines (1970) and Rosa Parks (1980).
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: I’m not interested in schemes, except for the one scheme that could get me killed + Screenplays usually sell for 42K + I am looking for an accomplice + It’s amazing that anyone even wants to talk to me.
- Franklin Foer profiles a doomed May-December D.C. relationship.
- Kirlian photography is beautiful but not particularly useful.
- Dr. Fredric Wertham studied evil, sometimes misidentified it.
- In the 1890s, King Camp Gillette had an insane idea for a new city.
- Crowds may be becoming less wise all the time.
- Nikola Tesla had a blind spot when it came to science.
- Paleofuturism about computers from a 1979 children’s book.
- Cloned horses are now permitted to compete in races.
- NYC is transforming unused telephone booths into Wi-Fi hotspots.
- Crime-scene DNA might not be as useful as it seems.
- Trying to decipher the cultural conditions that can lead to innovation.
- Historian Thomas Fleming examines American life in 1776.
- David Carr analyzes the further decline of newsprint.
- Norman Sas invented Electric Football in the ’40s, and it never improved.
- Penn criminologist Adrian Raine believes psychopathy is largely biological.
- How the tech boom and shifting geopolitics might change the lingua franca.
- Technocrats are (perhaps) supplanting idealists.
- Robots can now walk just like humans.
- “Home on the Range” is one of the prettiest songs ever about genocide.
- A brief note from 1897 about a rat trap accident.
- A brief note from 1879 about a hunchback daughter.
- A brief note from 1891 about a gloomy entertainer.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.