When I got a cochlear implant seven years ago, after being profoundly deaf for my entire life, hearing friends and acquaintances started asking me the same few questions: Had I heard music yet? Did I like it? What did it sound like?
I was 20 years old then. Aside from the amplified noises I’d heard through my hearing aids, which sounded more like murmurs distorted by thick insulation swaddling, I had never heard music, not really. But that did not mean I wasn’t in some way musical. I played piano and guitar as a child, and I remember enjoying the feel of my hands picking out the piano keys in rhythm, as well as the rich vibrations of the guitar soundboard against my chest. I would tap out a beat to many other daily tasks, too.
For several years, I became privately obsessed with marching in rhythm when walking around the block, counting out my steps like a metronome: One, two. One, two. Watching visual rhythms, from the flow of water to clapping hands and the rich expression of sign language, fascinated me. But in the hearing world, those experiences often didn’t count as music. And I gathered that my inability to hear music, at least in the view the people I knew, seemed unthinkable.
The police in New York on Friday said that they have developed a strong criminal case against Harvey Weinstein after an actress’s claim that he raped her seven years ago.
Speaking at a news conference at Police Headquarters in Lower Manhattan, officials in the Police Department said they were gathering evidence with an eye toward preparing a warrant to arrest Mr. Weinstein, whose representatives have said is undergoing therapy outside of New York.
The claims of the actress, Paz de la Huerta, have been a focus of investigators in the department’s Special Victims Division for several days, since Mr. Weinstein’s long history of sexual harassment of women was detailed in reports by The New York Times and other news organizations early last month. Those reports prompted a mountain of tips to the police in New York and London about other episodes.
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Harvey Weinstein in 2013.CreditRobyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Directly contradicting much of the Trump administration’s position on climate change, 13 federal agencies unveiled an exhaustive scientific report on Friday that says humans are the dominant cause of the global temperature rise that has created the warmest period in the history of civilization.
Over the past 115 years global average temperatures have increased 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to record-breaking weather events and temperature extremes, the report says. The global, long-term warming trend is “unambiguous,” it says, and there is “no convincing alternative explanation” that anything other than humans — the cars we drive, the power plants we operate, the forests we destroy — are to blame.
The report was approved for release by the White House, but the findings come as the Trump administration is defending its climate change policies. The United Nations convenes its annual climate change conference next week in Bonn, Germany, and the American delegation is expected to face harsh criticism over President Trump’s decision to walk away from the 195-nation Paris climate accord and top administration officials’ stated doubts about the causes and impacts of a warming planet.
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Smoke rose from trees burned in a wildfire in Wrightwood, Calif., last year. A report from 13 federal agencies says extreme weather events have cost the United States $1.1 trillion since 1980.CreditJonathan Alcorn/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A procedure used to relieve chest pain in hundreds of thousands of heart patients each year is useless for many of them, researchers reported on Wednesday.
Their study focused on the insertion of stents, tiny wire cages, to open blocked arteries. The devices are lifesaving when used to open arteries in patients in the throes of a heart attack.
But they are most often used in patients who have a blocked artery and chest pain that occurs, for example, walking up a hill or going up stairs. Sometimes patients get stents when they have no pain at all, just blockages.
Heart disease is still the leading killer of Americans — 790,000 people have heart attacks each year — and stenting is a mainstay treatment in virtually every hospital. More than 500,000 heart patients worldwide have stents inserted each year to relieve chest pain, according to the researchers. Other estimates are far higher.
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A new study has found that while stents can be lifesaving in opening arteries in patients having a heart attack, the devices are ineffective in relieving chest pain.CreditGJLP, CNRI, via Science Source
In the franchise’s 56th season, the Houston Astros are finally champions after closing out the Los Angeles Dodgers with a 5-1 win in Game 7 of what was a thrilling World Series from start to finish.
It was a Series defined by relief pitching and home runs, and Game 7 had both. Neither starting pitcher made it out of the third inning, with the teams combining to use eight relievers. On offense, the Astros were powered to victory by George Springer, the team’s center fielder, who homered for the fourth consecutive game, and tied Reggie Jackson and Chase Utley for the most home runs in a single World Series with five.
That the game had just one home run was almost an upset in a Series that included a record-setting 25 home runs, which shattered the previous mark of 22 set by the Anaheim Angels and the San Francisco Giants in 2002.
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The Astros celebrated with pitcher Charlie Morton after defeating the Dodgers to claim their first World Series title.Credit Matt Slocum/Associated Press
President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was indicted Monday on charges that he funneled millions of dollars through overseas shell companies and used the money to buy luxury cars, real estate, antiques and expensive suits.
The charges against Mr. Manafort and his longtime associate Rick Gates represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over Mr. Trump’s first year in office.
The two men appeared in the Federal District Court in Washington on Monday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to all charges.
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Paul Manafort surrendered to federal authorities on Monday.Published OnCreditImage by Alex Brandon/Associated Press
A slight girl all of 6, she leaves the modest family farm, where the father minds the livestock and the mother keeps a painful secret, and walks out to the main road. Off she goes to primary school, off to the Sisters of Mercy.
Her auburn hair in ringlets, this child named Catherine is bound for Tuam, the ancient County Galway town whose name derives from a Latin term for “burial mound.” It is the seat of a Roman Catholic archdiocese, a proud distinction announced by the skyscraping cathedral that for generations has loomed over factory and field.
Two miles into this long-ago Irish morning, the young girl passes through a gantlet of gray formed by high walls along the Dublin Road that seem to thwart sunshine. To her right runs the Parkmore racecourse, where hard-earned shillings are won or lost by a nose. And to her left, the mother and baby home, with glass shards embedded atop its stony enclosure.
Behind this forbidding divide, nuns keep watch over unmarried mothers and their children. Sinners and their illegitimate spawn, it is said. The fallen.
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A shrine built to honor the children.Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times
Nearly all big tech companies have an artificial intelligence project, and they are willing to pay experts millions of dollars to help get it done.
Silicon Valley’s start-ups have always had a recruiting advantage over the industry’s giants: Take a chance on us and we’ll give you an ownership stake that could make you rich if the company is successful.
Now the tech industry’s race to embrace artificial intelligence may render that advantage moot — at least for the few prospective employees who know a lot about A.I.
Tech’s biggest companies are placing huge bets on artificial intelligence, banking on things ranging from face-scanning smartphones and conversational coffee-table gadgets to computerized health care and autonomous vehicles. As they chase this future, they are doling out salaries that are startling even in an industry that has never been shy about lavishing a fortune on its top talent.
The singer doesn’t have to say a thing to loom over the culture.
Not long ago, a tattoo shop in Brooklyn got a bad review on Yelp. A customer was angry — not about his new ink, but about the soundtrack that accompanied his trip there.
“Why are you playing Sade,” he wrote, inserting an expletive. This was music he found fit for “a plastic surgeon’s waiting room,” not a cool tattoo parlor.
One can sort of understand where he was coming from.
Before record stores neared extinction, Sade was often stocked in the easy listening section. The band’s breakout success in the 1980s owed much to the advent of adult contemporary radio, where huge hits like “Smooth Operator” and “The Sweetest Taboo” eventually got sandwiched between selections from Michael Bolton and Kenny G.
But then and now, Sade had an appeal that lifted it far above the slush pile of schlock.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Explore the dynamic relationship between faith and science, where curiosity meets belief. Join us in fostering dialogue, inspiring discovery, and celebrating the profound connections that enrich our understanding of existence.
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Huge Salaries for Scarce A.I. Talent
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Sade
James' World 2 