The periodic table is, finally, an anthropological marvel, a human artifact that reflects all of the wonderful and artful and ugly aspects of human beings and how we interact with the physical world — the history of our species written in a compact and elegant script.

The Disappearing Spoon

Sam Kean

Pure alexia, unaccompanied by any difficulty in writing ("alexia sine" "agraphia") is not that uncommon, although it usually comes on suddenly, following a stroke or other brain injury. Less often, alexia develops gradually, as a consequence of a degenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s. But Lilian was the first person I had encountered whose alexia manifested first with musical notation, a musical alexia.

The Minds Eye

Oliver Sacks

The girl's explanation has become my motto for what we might imagine from our newly connected world: we're looking for the mouse. We look everywhere a reader or a viewer or a patient or a citizen has been locked out of creating and sharing, or has been served up passive or canned experience, and we're asking. If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen? I'm betting the answer is yes, or could be yes, if we give one another the opportunity to participate and reward one another for trying.

Cognitive Surplus

Clay Shirky

He stopped, thought he heard a sound. He looked around holding the knife by his hip. Lifted the blade to his eyes, checked it. The point as as smooth as before. he used the blade as a mirror, and turned it so it reflected the jungle gym. Someone was standing there, someone who had not been there a moment before. A blurry contour against the clean steel. He lowered the knife and looked directly at the jungle gym. Yes. But it wasn't the Vallinby killer. It was a child.

Let the Right One In

John Ajvide Lindqvist

She stood in the bathroom, her back to me. It didn't seem right to whack her with the cricket bat, which I still clutched in my numb right hand. Sensible but unsporting, and it wouldn't teach me anything about her bizarre activities. She was leaning out into the air, grunting and heaving, and suddenly hauled in the heavy front end of a very dead adult male. The body stuck, shaking in the window frame. "Don't shove, Maybelline," she said angrily. "You got the sholders jammed."

Godplayers

Damien Broderirck

The City & The City

China Mieville

The Next 100 Years

George Friedman

We went through the whole house. We went and looked in the shed. We even looked in the car. For the car to be there by the door when Father was gone, that was the hardest thing to explain.

Harvey

Herve Bouchard and Janice Nadeau