Tangent

“Free speech” allows citizens to speak truth to power; it also allows Facebook users to proclaim that “Elliot Rodger is an American Hero.” As Paula Todd writes in Extreme Mean: Trolls, Bullies, and Predators Online, free speech can be a formidable censor.

Alex Bellos, author of The Grapes of Math, was surprised at the detail with which people personify their favourite numbers. Obviously, four is the best.

In 1907, Vancouver residents initiated a racist riot against the city’s Chinese community. Now, in 2014, current fears about a Chinese “takeover” of Vancouver real estate show the evolving nature of Canadian xenophobia.

With The Knowledge, Lewis Dartnell has written a guidebook for rebuilding human society after the apocalypse. But how can we know what we’ll know after the end?

Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. makes use of a familiar metaphor: the creative work as infant. But a familiar term raises the question: does the creative process require you to murder your darlings?

John Williams’ classic, Stoner, resonates especially now that the ideals its characters hold—the university as refuge for the sensitive, inquisitive types—have been so thoroughly crushed.

The sixth extinction is most certainly on its way. Annalee Newitz's Scatter, Adapt, and Remember asks an important, if terrifying question: If the human race survives, will it look anything like we do now?

In The Thing with Feathers, Noah Strycker writes about the humanity of animals, which raises the question: how do we justify killing them?

The crisis in Ukraine has been framed as a clash of civilizations. But the very concept of “civilization” gets fuzzier the more you examine it, and may not help to illuminate real-world conflict.