Ants as artists and architects June 23, 2021 I have always been an experimental biologist. Ants have been my life, and I have tracked their behavior from above ground for over fifty years. Read More
A look inside Eva Palmer Sikelianos June 15, 2021 I was myself introduced to Eva Palmer Sikelianos while leafing through books and magazines about Greece in my parents’ library in the 1960s and 1970s. Read More
A look inside The Mushroom at the End of the World June 14, 2021 In 1908 and 1909 two railroad entrepreneurs raced each other to build track along Oregon’s Deschutes River. The goal of each was to be the first to create an industrial connection between the towering ponderosas of the eastern Cascades and the stacked lumberyards of Portland. Read More
Ivor Gurney: Writing in lockdown for fifteen years June 11, 2021 Contrary, perhaps, to expectation, few of us have produced great volumes of work in lockdown. Whilst many academics might previously have craved a moment out of time, for the world to stop and for them to have time to think, it doesn’t seem to have prompted the hoped-for avalanche of creativity. Read More
Farewell to the Arctic Ocean of old June 07, 2021 The Arctic Ocean is an ocean of ice. Everything that lives on, in or around the Arctic Ocean, and that includes peoples of the north, has adapted to and lives in harmony with that ice. But the Arctic Ocean is losing its ice. Read More
PUP Speaks Author expertise for an ever‑changing world June 07, 2021 On June 2nd Princeton University Press launched PUP Speaks—an exciting new initiative to support and champion authors as expert speakers. Katie Stileman has been overseeing the set-up of this new enterprise. Read More
By Design | An Infinite History June 04, 2021 Emma Rothschild’s An Infinite History is a history of infinite possibilities. The book traces the fortunes of a single family and its descendants across space and time, beginning with an ordinary, illiterate woman—Marie Aymard—in an ordinary, provincial part of France—Angoulême—in a time that was drifting towards political revolution and economic transformation. Read More
The loneliest neuron June 04, 2021 There it lives, the loneliest neuron. The neuron that lies furthest from the outside world. Furthest from the inputs from your senses; furthest from the outputs to your muscles. Read More
Is artificial intelligence today where brain research was 100 years ago? June 02, 2021 Babies are not born with randomly connected brains and turned on to learn. And yet, 100 years ago, neurobiologists were not so sure. Read More
The paradox of Chinese politics May 28, 2021 What should we make of a political system that is often repressive and not accountable to its people in elections, and yet can also be responsive to public opinion? That is the paradox of China’s political system in the twenty-first century. Read More
How to make money in nanoseconds May 28, 2021 A geodesic is the shortest path on Earth’s surface between two given locations. From a professional trader’s point of view, the locations that nowadays matter most are not exchanges’ historic city-centre headquarters, but a couple of dozen unremarkable, mainly suburban buildings in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, buildings that usually could pass for a warehouse. Read More
The world of Martin Luther May 25, 2021 The nineteenth century commemorated the Protestant hero Martin Luther with giant statues on a host of town squares across Germany. Read More
I spent a year and a half at a ‘no-excuses’ charter school – this is what I saw May 19, 2021 Charter schools are 30 years old as of 2021, and the contentious debate about their merits and place in American society continues. Read More
From equal rights to full rights May 18, 2021 The Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1923, has resurfaced in 2021 after a long sleep. Whether it becomes part of the US Constitution is anyone’s guess, as is the practical effect of such a change given the conservative tilt of the Supreme Court. Read More
Correcting the wealth gap May 14, 2021 With the tax season in full swing, it is wort reflecting on the purposes that taxes serve in society. One is state revenue; ensuring the acceptance of state issued currency in which taxes must be paid is another; and addressing inequality the third. Read More
