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March 2014

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Features

Garry Kasparov

Kasparov’s Gambit

The great chess champion plots his next moves in the games of global politics and computer intelligence

reindeer

Reindeer Games

Ecologists are racing across the ice to find out how climate change will affect Arctic ungulates

Michael Rockefeller in the Baliem Valley

Journey into the Kingdom of the Spirits

Michael Rockefeller’s fate has been a mystery for more than 50 years

vikings

Revenge of the Vikings

After decades of scholarship that emphasized their kinder, gentler side, the bad boys of the North are back with a vengeance

Jeopardy

Buzzed

What is the most addictive quiz show in the history of television?

Sandhill Cranes

Flight Club

This month hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes will converge in North America’s greatest wildlife spectacle

Carl Sagan

Star Power

His blockbuster show “Cosmos” is back. And his weird brilliance shines in a new Library of Congress archive of his papers. Yet Carl Sagan, who did more than anyone to make us dream of extraterrestrial civilizations, would be disappointed to know that we still haven’t found life out there

Departments

From the Editor

From the Editor

From the Editor

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Discussion

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From the Castle

From the Castle

From the Castle

Phenomena

Language

Language helps us express our deepest thoughts, or obscure them

Phenomena

In the Beginning was the Word

An illustrator finds divine inspiration in weekly sermons

Phenomena

The Write Stuff

How you write can often reveal more than what you write

Phenomena

Text Me Ishmael

Herman Melville’s classic is translated into emoticons

Phenomena

Sign Language

On the streets, a few words on a piece of cardboard can tell a life story

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