This week, ISIS announced it plans to print its own currency, which will allow the terrorist organization to honor the man who made its rise possible.
- Old Print Articles: Max Factor Jr. creates kissing robots to test lipstick (1939) + The decline of erstwhile child prodigy William James Sidis (1910/44) + W.D. Custead, pioneering aviator, became a hermit and nudist after being bested by the Wright brothers (1900).
- Featured Videos: Jeffrey Mishlove meets John C. Lilly, neuroscientist, psychonaut and dolphin procurer (1998) and AI pioneer John McCarthy + Peter Thiel interviewed at Web Summit 2014 + A behind-the-scenes look at Peter Sellers during The Magic Christian (1969) + Robotics enters the wine industry + Phil Ochs, singing journalist, takes on automation (1964).
- Recently Posted on NYC’s Craigslist: Pre-Black Friday sale + Take the circuitous route to parenthood + I had a bad day at the office.
- The Sharing Economy knows no real political affiliation.
- Jaron Lanier neatly links Artificial Intelligence and religion.
- “Net Neutrality” coiner Timothy Wu on President Obama’s bold move.
- Infamous fabulist Stephen Glass might be a changed man. Perhaps.
- Suzanne Snider’s 2006 postmortem of John DeLorean is republished.
- The Japan World Expo ’70 featured “washing machines for humans.”
- Timed to the release of Rosewater, Jon Stewart conducts a Reddit AMA.
- Some think all U.S. women’s prisons should be closed.
- Two notes about American unemployment after the 2008 collapse.
- Amazon settled with Hachette, but some big questions remain.
- Wealth inequality may be worse than even Thomas Piketty suggested.
- Economist Tim Harford looks at wealth inequality among nations.
- Senator Brownback, an economic disaster, was re-elected in Kansas.
- James Tilly Matthews believed an “Air Loom” controlled the world.
- At this point and likely forever, Mars One is more folly than fact.
- Peter Thiel uses suspect logic to argue we’re not in a Technological Age.
- Thiel’s argument about the Wright Brothers isn’t a great one.
- British novelist Hilary Mantel analyzes her country’s “harsh” mood.
- Malcolm Gladwell argues that football is immoral, but what about soccer?
- Steve Ballmer discusses the intersection of basketball and technology.
- Cuba allowed baseball player Yoan Moncada to leave. Why?
- Computers will eventually be good writers but not likely soon.
- Henry Kissinger is surprisingly sympathetic to Putin’s Ukraine folly.
- In the short term, Russia might be a hotter spot than the Middle East.
- Swedish doctor Hans Rosling tries to make sense of the Ebola epidemic.
- When there’s tissue engineering, using steroids will seem prehistoric.
- The European Space Agency landed a probe on a comet.
- News of President Lincoln’s assassination took 12 days to reach London.
- Slavoj Žižek is an avid consumer of vampire movies and detective fiction.
- A brief note from 1889 about a hungry girl.
- A brief note from 1926 about a good deed.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.