Venki Ramakrishnan on Virtual You March 24, 2023 What are the prospects of simulating ourselves in a computer? At first sight, this sounds more science fiction than fact. Read More
Roland Betancourt on White: The History of a Color February 02, 2023 Moving away from those who might wish to find a universal symbolism or archetypal truth in a color, Michel Pastoureau’s The History of a Color series has sought to understand color as first and foremost a social phenomenon, one with historically grounded realities and effects. Read More
A look inside Running Out December 22, 2022 On the high plains of western Kansas, there is no clear line between water and second chances. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was in search of both when I turned my Prius off a two-lane highway and onto the washboard gravel that led back to the farm. Read More
A look inside Pandemic Politics October 11, 2022 The floor of the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa was awash in red, white, and blue. Eager supporters of President Donald Trump were holding signs, wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, and sporting T-shirts with expressions ranging from “Guns, God, and Trump” to “Make Liberals Cry Again.” Read More
A look inside Syllabus October 04, 2022 What really is a syllabus? Is it a tool or a manifesto? A machine or a plan? What are its limits? Its horizon? And who is it really for? And what would happen if you took the syllabus as seriously as you take the most serious forms of writing in your own discipline? Read More
Pinning our hopes on our machines September 12, 2022 One day in 1999 some children playing in the streets of Kalkaji, New Delhi, found a computer fixed in a wall that separated their poor neighborhood from a rich office district. It might have been a strange sight for these young residents of such disadvantaged circumstances, but within hours they had mastered some basic workings of the device and had begun surfing the web. Read More
A look inside Bedeviled September 06, 2022 The glass of science is half empty. Researchers across the globe are fixated on all that we do not know yet. It was the same one hundred years ago, and more than one hundred years before then too. Read More
A look inside The Secret Body July 27, 2022 Imagine yourself as an alien with an exceptionally powerful telescope trying to understand what happens on Earth. Read More
Welcome to Armageddon July 19, 2022 Each day throughout the year, the tour buses begin arriving at Megiddo soon after 9:00 a.m., disgorging fifty tourists at a time. By the time the site closes at 5:00 p.m., several dozen buses will have deposited hundreds of visitors. “Welcome to Armageddon,” the tour guides say, as they march their flocks up the steep incline and through the ancient city gate. Read More
Conservatism as a political practice July 13, 2022 Before the story goes on, some ground needs to be cleared. What is conservatism? What is this a story of? There are no knockdown facts here. Read More
A new way of life July 06, 2022 Every day billions of people devote a significant amount of time to worshiping an imaginary being. More precisely, they praise, exalt, and pray to the God of the major Abrahamic religions. They put their hopes in—and they fear—a transcendent, supernatural deity that, they believe, created the world and now exercises providence over it. Read More
Taxing the light of heaven June 27, 2022 There is no bloodshed in our last story, but it takes us to the heart of the tax-design problem. This is the tale of the window tax, imposed in Britain from 16971 to 1851. Read More
The complex origins, development, and meanings of human rights June 14, 2022 In 2015, a young girl and her father crossed into the United States from the border with Mexico. Astrid and Arturo, K’iche’ Indians from Guatemala, were fleeing the systematic discrimination and violence their people have suffered for decades. Read More
Seamus Heaney, pseudonym ‘Incertus’ June 13, 2022 When he first began to publish poems, Seamus Heaney’s chosen pseudonym was ‘Incertus’, meaning ‘not sure of himself’. Characteristically, this was a subtle irony. Read More
Life-changing doubt, the Internet, and a crisis of authority June 01, 2022 Yisroel was an earnestly pious boy growing up Hasidic in Brooklyn, New York. With his side curls grazing his shoulders, thick plastic glasses, and big black velvet yarmulke, he looked like all the other boys in his yeshiva, where he studied the Torah and its commentaries from early in the morning until late at night. Read More
