Category: Lifestyle
Reckoning With Growth
Though there had been 600 years of dramatic change before 1750, these changes did not increase the standard of living of ordinary citizen of England.
The Specter and the Shadows
My oldest friends are from the Bronx. A half-dozen of them, and all without any parents remaining. Me, still with a mother who…
The ‘Mad Egghead’ Who Built a Mouse Utopia
Lee Alan Dugatkin in The Guardian: Standing before the Royal Society of Medicine in London…
Factory Robot Convinces 12 Other Robots to Go on Strike
A real-life sci-fi scenario unfolded in Shanghai, China, when a small AI-powered robot managed to…
The Surprising Benefits of Talking Out Loud to Yourself
Why people talk out loud to themselves is to deal with “situations that are novel or highly stressful, or…
Ayad Akhtar Wants Writers to Reckon with AI
McNeal, the new play by Ayad Akhtar, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced, focuses on an egocentric, self-destructive…
The Nature of Natural Laws
The Sun rises every day. Water boils at 100°C. Apples fall to the ground. We live in a world in which objects behave the same given the same circumstances.
The Needy Genius Who Understood the Cosmos
The Science Museum in Britain holds numerous items associated with the Nobel Prize-winning mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose.
Machiavelli and the Emergence of the Private Study
Andrew Hui tracks the rise of the private study by revisiting the bibliographic imaginations of Machiavelli…
The Culture Wars Today: Peter York On a Politics of Mass Deception
Culture wars are being waged globally, and they reflect an intractable divide in society. Is…
Half of the World’s Poor Live in Just 5 Countries
From the World Bank Blogs: However, we mustn’t lose sight of the numerous other countries with high poverty rates.
Can AI Review the Scientific Literature — and Figure Out What it All Means?
Helen Pearson in Nature: Artificial intelligence (AI) could help speedily summarize research. But it comes with risks.