Extreme Venn Diagrams (They’re Beautiful)

“If you think Venn diagrams are just a bunch of interlocking circles, think again. Pushing this iconic branch of mathematics to its limits reveals just how varied – and beautiful – these diagrams can be. This gallery showcases some of the wilder possibilities, including the most recent breakthrough in Venn geometry – the first simple, symmetric diagram to encompass a whopping 11 sets.”

The ‘Dark And Stormy Night’ Godawful Sentence Winner Of 2012 (It’s A Doozy)

“The winners for the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest” for worst opening sentence to a hypothetical novel “have been announced … The winner this year was Cathy Bryant of Manchester, England, who came up with this beautiful dud: ‘As he told her that he loved her she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, …'”

Renovation Of Melbourne’s Hamer Hall An Acoustical ‘Miracle’

“From the circle, the change was immediately apparent. Acoustic consultants Marshall Day and Lawrence Kirkegaard have managed a minor engineering miracle. Old Hamer Hall was the acoustic equivalent of a neglected Renaissance painting, its colour and detail obscured under grimy varnish. New Hamer Hall restores clarity and vitality to the symphonic sound.”

The Algorithm That Runs The World

“You might not have heard of the algorithm that runs the world. Few people have, though it can determine much that goes on in our day-to-day lives: the food we have to eat, our schedule at work, when the train will come to take us there. Somewhere, in some server basement right now, it is probably working on some aspect of your life tomorrow, next week, in a year’s time.”

Australia’s Oldest Indigenous Art Award Stuck In The Doldrums

The problems with the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (called “the Telstras” after the sponsoring company) “in its present form are multiple. They reflect the travails of the indigenous art scene after its state-subsidised over-expansion and the abrupt collapse of its wider market in recent years. The model for the exhibition and awards is almost three decades old, and completely outdated.”

Salman Rushdie On The March Of Justice

“If you really look at the world with the long eye of history, now as compared to 200 years ago, the degrees of justice have increased. The age of the great empires is over. Many peoples – including my own country of origin, India – are now determining their own fate instead of having it determined from the outside. But history is one of those rivers that always moves in both directions at the same time.”