“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.” – Anais Nin
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By the mid-1920s, the American government was at its wit’s end. The era’s strict Prohibition laws had proved futile. Americans were still drinking; they were just doing so on the sly, frequenting speakeasies and buying alcohol from crime syndicates. Gangs would steal large quantities of industrial alcohol—used for everything from fueling machines to sterilizing instruments— then redistill the hooch to […]
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Since NASA has made missions to the moon, Mars, and Pluto they are now getting ready to mission to the sun. This spacecraft will come within four million miles from the sun’s surface to explore its atmosphere and observe how this star works. The probe called Solar Probe Plus will have a shield on it so that it can survive […]
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Ahhh — to remember the glory days before dirty air descended on Delhi, a methane leak in California gassed thousands, and catastrophic smog in China prompted people to buy bottled air, of all things. Before the Industrial Revolution, the world was basically one big, serene Walden Pond, right? Wrong. Take off those rose-tinted glasses and get acquainted with the story of […]
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“All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.” – François de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon
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“Cursing the darkness only delays the dawn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Anatoli Brouchkov, a scientist whose curiosity and thirst for knowledge drove him to go beyond the standard protocol of his experimentation by injecting himself with an ancient “Eternal Life” bacteria. In 2009, a 3.5-million-year-old bacteria strain called Bacillus F was discovered deep in the permafrost of Siberia’s Sakha Republic. Scientists later found that mice and fruit flies exposed to the bacteria seemed to […]
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“Hope is tomorrow’s veneer over today’s disappointment.” – Evan Esar
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“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” – E.F. Schumacher
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