GZA has teamed up with top cosmologists and physicists from MIT and Cornell to produce his latest album, Dark Matter. The album is the first in a series “designed to get a wide audience hooked on science.”
“God put the needle on the disc of Saturn / The record he played revealed blueprints and patterns”
See Them Shimmer
Recommended Reading: This essay by Eiren Caffall at The Rumpus on the Dead Dads Club and losing a loved one.
Strange Brew
Lorrie Moore once said in an interview that what’s good for writing is bad for life. In this vein, we might assume that coffee, which is bad for your health but good for your writing, neatly supports her conjecture. But what if it turns out that coffee is a detriment to creativity? Maria Konnikova investigates research that suggests this might be the case.
●
●
Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again
“I haven’t met Drake, but I have of course met people who have met Drake. But you have to realize how o-l-d I am. I’m not likely to go to the same parties. Or many parties at all, to be frank.” Junot Diaz interviews Margaret Atwood for The Boston Review. We obviously recommend you read our respective interviews with them both, too.
●
●
New Short Story by DFW
“Every whole person has ambitions, objectives, initiatives, goals. This one particular boy’s goal was to be able to press his lips to every square inch of his own body.” The New Yorker posts a new short story, “Backbone,” by David Foster Wallace.
●
●
On the Spectrum
What color would The Little Prince be? Before you dismiss this as an inane question, artist Jaz Parkinson created color signatures based on how often books mentioned certain hues. The results look like a better Rothko painting. Pair with: Radiolab’s fascinating podcast on the science of color.
You Can’t Take His Word for It
“The suit is the most recent legal move in a years-long dispute between Burton and the broadcaster that originated the series.” New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog reports that LeVar Burton is being sued by WNED-TV in Buffalo, NY over the continued use of his famous Reading Rainbow tagline, “but you don’t have to take my word for it.”