IN conversation with a learned friend lately, our talk ran on various definitions of culture, and on the fact that for one reason or another we found them all unsatisfactory. This led us to ponder the ...

This is how fundamental discoveries — aka, “useless knowledge” — are usually made: not so much by hunting for something specific, but by wandering with an interested eye amid the unknown. It’s also ...

Discouraged by a steady decline in the number of U. S. students studying languages, and by the racial and religious discriminations against teachers in other lands —which they deplored*—2,500 members ...

‘O mighty reservoir of useless information! Nothing about thee is more wonderful than this, that thou daredst to remain uneducated. Who shall say that thy supremacy among men is not due to thy being ...

A new water cooler discussion went viral on Twitter this week, with a post from the Super Pod Saga prompting everyone and their dog to share "useless video game knowledge" which is also really cool ...

Each day, I walk down the path of blue-lit internet highways, through Instagram rabbit holes to nowhere, across Wikipedia pages I don’t remember why I was scanning, my face painted a clinical white by ...