This is a gorgeous site. “Based on the award-winning book by the architect James Sanders, the Celluloid Skyline website is a multimedia exploration of cities, film, and architecture. It is based on the premise that the mythic city of “movie New York,” which has entertained and excited audiences around the world for generations, is also something more: an extraordinary urban resource, with profound lessons about the design and use of cities.” Thanks to Marko Ahtisaari for pointing it out.

“Time magazine spurred public debate 40 years ago with a startling question on its cover: ‘Is God Dead?’ Some estimate that half the world’s population was then nominally atheist. And many in the West were predicting that scientific progress would eliminate religious belief altogether by the next century. The tide has dramatically turned, however, and Alistar McGrath – a theologian at Oxford University who was once in that camp – charts the shift in currents of thought in The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World.” More here from the Christian Science Monitor.

“Why are so many national anthems so bad? Why is it that the music only rarely reflects the culture of the country? How much better it would be if there was a salsa number for Cuba, a tango for Argentina, a Verdi aria for Italy, a Bob Marley song for Jamaica and a James Brown funk tune for America… even the recent anthems of the post-colonial nations are mostly pompous dirges. Ironically, a 19th-century European flavour was seen as having the correct seriousness for a new country.” Full story here in The Telegraph.

* Lines from the National Anthem of the Republic of Congo.

In 2000, the Clay Mathematics Institute offered a prize of $1,000,000 for each of seven unsolved problems in math. Among these are the P vs. NP problem, the Poincare Conjecture, Yang-Mills Theory, and the Riemann Hypothesis.

Now, in a strange twist (pointed out to me by J.M. Tyree), a reputable mathematician named Louis de Branges, who has previously proved the Bieberbach conjecture, claims to have proved the Riemann Hypothesis, and has posted his proof on the web. But no mathematician will look at the proof to check if it is correct because, de Branges claims, they don’t like him. Here’s the odd story from the London Review of Books.

For those who don’t read Arabic a great source of ‘inside’ information are the many and interesting blogs being written in English from inside Iraq. Several of particular note are, Healing Iraq, Baghdad Burning, and Life in Iraq. Other blogs can be reached through the links at these blogs. I don’t think I’m exaggerating to call it truly important reading material.

“Earlier this year an East African newspaper sent a reporter to the region of Siaya, in Kenya, near Lake Victoria, where the father of a forty-three-year-old Chicago Democrat named Barack Obama was born. News that the younger Obama was emerging as one of the brightest lights in American politics had only recently reached the area.” More here from The Atlantic Monthly.

“‘We’re living in the middle of a witch hunt and fat people are the witches,’ said Marilyn Wann of San Francisco, a militant member of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. ‘It’s gotten markedly worse in the last few years because of the propaganda that fatness, a natural human characteristic, is somehow a form of disease.'” From CNN.

Professor Bill Mitchell gave an excellent talk today in Cambridge on campus design and how it is changing with the spread of new communication technologies like WiFi. He shared a great quote by Charles Moore when showing Gehry’s new MIT Stata Centre: “the fundamental principle of campus design should be to figure out the exact spot that the next revolution should begin.”

For more see the notes on Mitchell’s talk (thanks to blackbeltjones).

“During the past two decades… a few hardy souls have reopened the scientific study of déjà vu. They hope to nail down a persuasive explanation of the phenomenon, as well as shed light on some fundamental elements of memory and cognition. In the new book The Déjà Vu Experience: Essays in Cognitive Psychology, Alan S. Brown, a professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, surveys the fledgling subfield. ‘What we can try to do is zero in on it from a variety of different angles,’ he says.” From the Chronicle of Higher Education.

“The world has never been overpopulated with humans in any meaningful sense. It seems, though, that it is overpopulated with theoretical fears of overpopulation. The appeal of the overpopulation myth is obvious—who doesn’t love a simple, easily graspable idea that seems to explain a great deal?” From ReasonOnline.

Book review of Do Animals Think? by Clive Wynne, and Animal Talk by Tim Friend. From Discover Magazine.

“Two years ago American scientists created life. Or did they? It all depends on what you mean by life. More specifically, it depends on whether you are prepared to regard viruses as living entities. Viruses have genes, and they replicate, mutate and evolve, all of which sounds lifelike enough. And in August 2002, a team at the State University of New York (SUNY) announced that it had made a virus from scratch, by chemistry alone.” From Prospect Magazine.

“Homosexual Activity Among Animals Stirs Debate“, from National Geographic News.

Gehry has designed a Museum of Tolerance which will be built in Jerusalem. “In the culminating segment of a film made for the Center’s facilities in Los Angeles and New York, for example, a middle-aged man says: ‘Tolerance is based on a conviction there’s room here for everybody.’ That definition is a profoundly American one, reflecting the reality of a nation with vast space and no existential threats. It sounds irrelevant, even ludicrous, in an Israeli-Palestinian context. In this country, almost no one believes that there is enough land or political power for everybody to share equitably.” From the NY Times.

In a terribly sad and disappointing performance, Mike Tyson lost last night’s fight with Danny Williams. “I told you that Mike Tyson had become a myth and that I would expose him,” said Williams, “and the moment I knew I was right came in the third round. I could feel him weakening, I had taken his best shots and I was still around and growing stronger. My plan was to box him, but when he landed some big shots in the first round, I said to myself, ‘Let’s go to war’.” Williams waged it so effectively that Tyson’s last scenario of hope – a seven-fight comeback trail which would pay off $40 million worth of debt and return him to the heavyweight title he first won as a 20-year-old – swiftly joined all the other debris of a tortured life. From The Independent.

“As the recording industry tries in unprecedented fashion to enforce copyright laws against individual consumers, legal experts say people can take several steps to try to avoid costly litigation.” From SFGate.com

“As young Middle East talent wins global acclaim, some chafe at stereotyping.” From the Christian Science Monitor.

“Francis H. C. Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, and the leading molecular biologist of his age, died Wednesday night in a hospital in San Diego. He was 88.” From the NY Times. And here’s an obituary from the BBC.

“If intelligent life exists elsewhere in our galaxy, advances in computer processing power and radio telescope technology will ensure we detect their transmissions within two decades. That is the bold prediction from a leading light at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute in Mountain View, California.” From New Scientist.

Constantine Cavafy wrote this in 1904. It was one of Edward W. Said’s favorite poems, and was read beautifully at his funeral by his daughter, Najla, which is where I first heard it. In this time of daily terror alerts and fear-mongering, it seems we are all still “Waiting for the Barbarians“.