Jelena Markovic writes: I keep religious icons in my house, the Orthodox ones where Christ has dark, pensive eyes. When my friends come over, they sometimes ask why. It doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of my personality. ‘My parents are religious,’ I say. This makes no sense, because I put the icons up myself. My friend Daniel keeps icons up as well. ‘I’m not sure if I’m a believer, but if there was one true faith, it would…
Arizona State University News: Why is human culture — the shared body of knowledge passed down across generations — so much more powerful than animal cultures? “What’s special about our species?” is a question scientists have wrestled with for centuries, and now a scientist at Arizona State University has a new hypothesis that could change the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. “Ten years ago, it was basically accepted that it was the ability of human culture…
Sujata Gupta writes: On a trip to Siberia in 2019, cognitive scientist Pablo Fernandez Velasco attended a raffle drawing with the region’s Evenki reindeer herders. Prizes included a soccer ball, tea, a portable radio, a GPS unit and other knickknacks. A herder in Velasco’s group won the GPS. “I thought [that] was one of the fancier prizes,” says Velasco, of the University of York in England. “He was crestfallen.” The herder, who had been eyeing the radio, had no use…
Marshall, the county seat of Madison County NC, a sliver of a town that sits between steep slopes on the east and the French Broad River to the west, got swamped by the Helene flooding. Residents and neighbors in the surrounding area have shown resourcefulness and initiative in disaster recovery that will provide lessons for generations to come on the power of community and the capacity of ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary feats.
BBC News reports: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk are “the worst polluters in human history”, Stephen Fry has said. The actor and comedian made the claim during a lecture at Kings College, London. “You and your children cannot breathe the air or swim in the waters of our culture without breathing in the toxic particulates and stinking effluvia that belch and pour unchecked from their companies into the currents of our world,” he said of the…
Vivek V Venkataraman writes: The Dilemma of the Deserted Husband unfolded in the late 1950s amid a band of G/wi hunter-gatherers, a subgroup of Ju/’hoansi (often known as !Kung San), dwelling in the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. According to the South African-born anthropologist and Bushman Survey Officer George Silberbauer, a woman named N!onag//ei had left her husband, /wikhwema, for his best friend. Few were surprised. After all, /wikhwema was a temperamental and pompous man, and a bit of a…
Derek Thompson writes: The argument that smartphones and social media are contributing to the rise in teen mental distress is strong. A number of observational and experimental studies show that teen anxiety started rising just as smartphones, social media, and front-facing cameras contributed to a wave of negative emotionality that seems to be sweeping the world. But I have one small reason to question the strongest version of the smartphone thesis. You can find a summary of it on page…
Megan Kang writes: Of all the potential explanations we tested, we discovered that the post-Second World War economic boom and relaxed federal gun regulations most drove the surge in demand for guns. As unemployment rates decreased and incomes increased, firearms – once deemed a luxury or practical necessity – grew within reach for more and more Americans. Simultaneously, cultural attitudes surrounding gun ownership may have shifted, as multiple generations of Americans returning from the Second World War, the Korean War…
Lydia Wilson writes: Deep in Australia’s Northern Territory, there is scant light pollution and the skies are full of stars. I asked my companion, David, to teach me the unfamiliar constellations, so different from those I see in my home in the Northern Hemisphere. An Indigenous Australian from the Central Desert Region of the continent, he was quick to comply. “Up there,” he pointed, “is the head of the emu, see?” I didn’t. He traced a swirl with his finger,…
Ben Crair writes: At around 9 a.m. every weekday, a crow caws in the Jardin des Plantes, the oldest botanical garden in Paris. The sound is a warning to every other crow: Frédéric Jiguet, a tall ornithologist whose dark hair is graying around the ears, has shown up for work. As Jiguet walks to his office at the French National Museum of Natural History, which is on the garden’s grounds, dozens of the black vandals take to the trees and…
Our film “No Other Land” on occupied Masafer Yatta’s brutal expulsion won best documentary in Berlinale. Israel’s channel 11 aired this 30 second segment from my speech, insanely called it “anti semitic” – and I’ve been receiving death threats since. I stand behind every word. pic.twitter.com/2burPfZeKO — Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) February 25, 2024 The Guardian reports: An Israeli film-maker who won one of the top prizes at the Berlin film festival has said German officials’ description of the…
Ross Andersen writes: One night last winter, over drinks in downtown Los Angeles, the biologist David Gruber told me that human beings might someday talk to sperm whales. In 2020, Gruber founded Project CETI with some of the world’s leading artificial-intelligence researchers, and they have so far raised $33 million for a high-tech effort to learn the whales’ language. Gruber said that they hope to record billions of the animals’ clicking sounds with floating hydrophones, and then to decipher the…
Beyoncé and her husband, Jay-Z, at the 66th Grammy Awards on Feb. 4, 2024, in Los Angeles. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images By William Nash, Middlebury On Super Bowl Sunday, Beyoncé released two country songs – “16 Carriages” and “Texas Hold ‘Em” – that elicited a mix of admiration and indignation. This is not her first foray into the genre, but it is her most successful and controversial entry. As of last week, Beyoncé became the first Black woman to have a…
Nina Strochlic writes: It was a dark February evening when a young Somali math professor posted a poem on his Facebook page. In keeping with the tradition of his ancestors, who maintained an oral culture until only recently, he spoke it aloud in a rhythmic cadence: “When I realized there is neither wells dug for you, nor rescuers on the way and the leaders elected to serve the nation have corrupted the resources;” Then he uploaded the recording to his…
Ahmad Ibsais writes: Growing up in the diaspora, I clung to the stories of Palestine I heard from my parents and grandparents. They gave me the undying belief that Palestinians would one day be free because we are a people rooted in resilience, culture, language, and one another. Part of resisting the 76 years of brutal Israeli occupation is passing on these stories. Some were told by my mother when making dishes like maklouba, which was always served with “Sahtain!,”…
The Observer reports: Its walls collapsed and its minaret cut short, Gaza’s Omari mosque remains standing but vastly diminished. Around it, the historic old city is also in tatters. The 7th-century mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Gaza, was Gaza’s most famous and its surroundings a focal point of the Palestinian enclave’s history and culture, but the damage done to its heritage over more than 100 days of Israeli bombardment spreads across the city. For the few Palestinians…