Science

Thomas Nagel, in Mind and Cosmos, despairs of finding a place for values in the world as it is described by physical and biological science. This gives me today's theme.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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MONTAGNE: Dawn will tell us more about the damage to the East Coast. But there's little doubt that it's massive. Water from Hurricane Sandy washed over parts of Manhattan last night like heavy seas coming over the deck of a ship.

BOB MCGEE: Essentially, Manhattan south of 39th Street is without power.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION, from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

As Hurricane Sandy, or whether - at this point in time, it's Superstorm Sandy, when it did thunder ashore as a hurricane, Tamara Brownstein(ph) was assessing the damage. She was working for the Red Cross in Sea Bright, New Jersey.

The National Weather Service is tracking where the superstorm Sandy goes next. Jennifer McNatt, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's national operations center, speaks with Steve Inskeep about what people should expect.

The world's fastest supercomputers have come back to the U.S. In June, the title was claimed by a machine named Sequoia at Lawrence Livermore Labs. Monday, at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, what could be an even faster computer comes online. It's called Titan and it would not have been possible were it not for the massive market for video games.

Wherever you look these days, it seems labels that strive to send a message about our food are on the table. In California, there's a vote coming up on whether genetically modified foods should be labeled. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission updated its guidelines for "green" labeling.

Hurricane Sandy is bearing down on the East Coast of the U.S., bringing sustained wind, heavy rain, and flooding that's forcing roads, bridges and mass transit systems to close from New York City to Washington. We're following the storm's progress and its impacts here on The Two-Way .

Science and religion alike grapple with some of our deepest questions: What is the purpose of life? Why is the natural world just so? Why does the biological world strike us as so exquisitely designed?

Here are a few reasons government forecasters at the National Hurricane Center and emergency management officials are so concerned about Sandy:

1. Sandy is one of the largest hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. Sandy's winds cover an area of more than 1,000 miles in diameter. That's enormous by hurricane standards. So instead of affecting an area a couple of hundred miles across, Sandy will cut a huge swath. That means many millions of people are probably going to be exposed to high winds, heavy rains, and, for those on the coast, powerful storm surge.

It is autumn, and where I live the leaves are peaking; there is a riot of them everywhere, narrow ones, broad ones, droopy ones, crunchy ones. Leaves come in so many shapes, hues, textures — the closer you look, the more differences you see. Botanists have names for every leaf type, and clumped together, says writer Robert Dunn, they sound like free verse poetry ...