Jascha Hoffman

Bio

I'm a journalist who covers science and culture. I write The Scan column for the Science section of the New York Times. I also conduct interviews for the science journal Nature. I live, and sing, in San Francisco.

Posted by Jascha on January 1, 2012 4:36 PM

The Future of Opera

The inventor and composer Tod Machover, whose group at MIT's Media Lab developed the technology behind Guitar Hero, has built instruments for musicians from Prince to Yo-Yo Ma. As Machover prepares for the world premiere of his robotic opera Death and the Powers in Monaco in September, he explains how his interactive performance techniques might lead to personalized therapies... [text] [pdf]

Posted by Jascha on July 15, 2010 12:45 AM

Icarus at the Edge of Time

Brian Greene, author of best-selling books The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University. As an orchestral work based on his 2008 children's book, Icarus at the Edge of Time, premieres at the World Science Festival in New York City, Greene discusses black holes and how music might portray the physics of warped space-time... [text] [pdf]

Posted by Jascha on May 26, 2010 12:16 AM

Science on Stage

Last year, after a play about the life of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, a stranger walked to the stage and said, "You got it exactly right." It was Trivers himself... [full text] [pdf]

Posted by Jascha on January 22, 2009 4:48 PM

Science of the Five Senses

The taste of a ripe tomato, the hook of a catchy song, the scent of a lover’s hair. What is it, exactly, that drives us to seek these things again and again? In a series of talks at the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers and artists will raise a question for the amateur hedonist: If we had a better understanding of the signals our bodies send to our brains, might we take more pleasure from them? [full text]

Posted by Jascha on November 1, 2008 4:53 PM

Israel from the Inside

“Sometimes life is too much, you have to tone it down to make art,” says the Israeli cartoonist Rutu Modan. Her own work has evolved over the past fifteen years from rather strange and grotesque fables into some of the strongest graphic fiction on the planet... [full text]

Posted by Jascha on October 3, 2008 5:32 PM

Resume

THE NEW YORK TIMES, "The Scan" columnist, 2013 - present • Cover books, films, exhibits and other cultural events in the Science Times. NATURE, Books and Arts contributor, 2008-present • Cover books, films, exhibits and other cultural events in the Science Times. Interview scientists and artists (such as Margaret Atwood, Werner Herzog and Tom Wolfe) for the culture pages of the British science journal. NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, Research Editor, 2008-2011 • Fact-checked articles on science and culture on a freelance basis. NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, Editorial Assistant (2005-2008) • Edited science reviews, matched books to reviewers, hired staff. FREELANCE SCIENCE JOURNALIST, 2002-present • Reported on science and culture for Believer, Boston Globe, Nature, Pitchfork, Salon, Scientific American Mind, and The New York Times Book Review and Magazine.
EDUCATION Harvard College, 1997-2002 A.B. Magna Cum Laude in Comp. Study of Religion. Coursework in computer science, philosophy and music. Harvard College Scholar. LANGUAGES: French, Portuguese and Wolof. COMPUTER: Audio and video editing. Simple web design. INTERESTS: Songwriting and Brazilian music, yoga and Zen. References and clips available upon request.

Posted by Jascha on February 17, 2007 1:53 AM

The Ambient Walkman

The popularity of the iPod has given new urgency to an old criticism of the portable music player: namely, that it isolates the listener by tuning out the world around him. As one response to this problem, Noah Vawter, a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has created a pair of headphones that tunes the listener back in...

Posted by Jascha on December 11, 2006 9:44 PM

The Riemann Hypothesis

The Riemann Hypothesis is, roughly speaking, a 150-year-old guess about how the prime numbers are spaced along the number line. Computers have been able to give very strong evidence for this guess, and hundreds of papers have been written assuming its validity. It is one of those rare problems that is both intelligible to the uninitiated and of deep mathematical interest. But despite the efforts of generations of the world’s best mathematicians, it has yet to be proved or disproved ...

Posted by Jascha on May 1, 2004 5:52 AM

Erik Friedlander: Maldoror

[Brassland; 2003] Rating: 8.3 In 1846, Isidor Ducasse was born to a French consular official in Uruguay. By 1862, he had graduated from a French boarding school, where he's said to have excelled at arithmetic, drawing, and Latin verse...

Posted by Jascha on January 27, 2004 2:07 AM

Iron & Wine: The Sea and the Rhythm EP

It struck everyone as a little weird that Sub Pop would be the one to issue Sam Beam's hushed folk debut. From a distance, Beam's lo-fi compositions sounded like a Harry Smith field recording plucked away by Nick Drake with Crosby, Stills & Nash on backup. But close up it was all about the poetry: concrete, ambiguous, and laced with tender irony...

Posted by Jascha on September 15, 2003 2:22 AM

Prefuse 73: One Word Extinguisher

Prefuse 73 One Word Extinguisher [Warp; 2003] Rating: 9.1 Up to now, Scott Herren -- the shy, lanky Atlantan responsible for Prefuse 73's fabulous glitch-hop debut Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives -- hasn't made his name as a purveyor...

Posted by Jascha on May 8, 2003 2:11 AM