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Category: Culture

What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, culture, identity? In Gaza, we are beginning to find out

What does it mean to erase a people – a nation, culture, identity? In Gaza, we are beginning to find out

Nesrine Malik writes: I will start this column with a question for you, dear reader. What connects you with your country, and makes you feel it is yours? What gives you a sense of identity and belonging? It’s the physical things, of course – where you live, where you were born, where your family and friends reside. But underlying those practical aspects, I suspect, are all the other things that you don’t think about, that you take for granted. The…

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Why the future might not be where you think it is

Why the future might not be where you think it is

Bystrov/Shutterstock By Ruth Ogden, Liverpool John Moores University Imagine the future. Where is it for you? Do you see yourself striding towards it? Perhaps it’s behind you. Maybe it’s even above you. And what about the past? Do you imagine looking over your shoulder to see it? How you answer these questions will depend on who you are and where you come from. The way we picture the future is influenced by the culture we grow up in and the…

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The sea was never blue

The sea was never blue

Maria Michela Sassi writes: Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm…

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Robert Bellah, a socialist who insisted that democracy needs religion

Robert Bellah, a socialist who insisted that democracy needs religion

Matthew Rose writes: If Émile Durkheim helped Bellah understand American ideals, the German sociologist Max Weber helped him confront American realities. Bellah’s deepest criticism of individualism was that it undermined the very conditions that make it possible. Its vision of human beings as free to choose their own identities and commitments had not brought about a more creative or reflective society. It had resulted in people who were lonely, disoriented, and servile to the power of markets, states, and public opinion….

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Nearly 20% of the cultural differences between societies boil down to ecological factors – new research

Nearly 20% of the cultural differences between societies boil down to ecological factors – new research

How much of a culture could be due to things like the grain it traditionally grew? Visoot Uthairam/Moment via Getty Images By Alexandra Wormley, Arizona State University and Michael Varnum, Arizona State University In some parts of the world, the rules are strict; in others they are far more lax. In some places, people are likely to plan for the future, while in others people are more likely to live in the moment. In some societies people prefer more personal…

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The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

The puzzle of Neanderthal aesthetics

Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes: Sometime between 135,000-50,000 years ago, hands slick with animal blood carried more than 35 huge horned heads into a small, dark, winding cave. Tiny fires were lit amidst a boulder-jumbled floor, and the flame-illuminated chamber echoed to dull pounding, cracking and squelching sounds as the skulls of bison, wild cattle, red deer and rhinoceros were smashed open. This isn’t the gory beginning of an ice age horror novel, but the setting for a fascinating Neanderthal mystery….

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Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Colin Woodard writes: Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front. In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros. Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places “where the middle class used to flock to…

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Unearthing the origins of agriculture

Unearthing the origins of agriculture

John Carey writes: Archaeobiology involves gathering and analyzing the remains of humans and plants to discern how people were living and what they were eating and doing. It started first with bioarchaeology, a term coined in the 1970s for the study of human bones and teeth, explains Clark Larsen, an anthropologist at The Ohio State University in Columbus. Researchers can use clues in bone structure and advanced technologies to determine whether our ancestors walked or ran a lot, measure isotopes…

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The many myths of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’

The many myths of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’

Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik Wade write: The few uses of “Anglo-Saxon” in Old English seem to be borrowed from the Latin Angli Saxones. Manuscript evidence from pre-Conquest England reveals that kings used the Latin term almost exclusively in Latin charters, legal documents and, for a brief period, in their titles, such as Anglorum Saxonum Rex, or king of the Anglo-Saxons. The references describe kings like Alfred and Edward who did not rule (nor claim to rule) all the English kingdoms. They were specifically referring to…

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Are world happiness rankings culturally biased?

Are world happiness rankings culturally biased?

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas writes: Every year, the World Happiness Report ranks 146 countries around the globe by their average level of happiness. Scandinavian countries usually top the list, the U.S. falls someplace in the mid-teens, and war-torn and deeply impoverished countries are at the bottom. The happiness scores come from a survey of life satisfaction, which goes something like this: Considering your life as a whole and using the mental image of a ladder, with the best possible life as…

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Orwell and Camus’ loyalty to truth

Orwell and Camus’ loyalty to truth

William Fear writes: A war still raged in Europe, but the enemy were firmly in retreat. The occupation of Paris had been broken, and France was free, and so were the cafés of the Boulevard St Germain. No longer did the waiters have to serve coffee to SS officers. One afternoon in April 1945, a dishevelled Englishman walked into one such café. He was a war correspondent for the Observer — fond of shag-tobacco and Indian tea. His pen-name was…

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Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

Unlocking secrets of the honeybee dance language – bees learn and culturally transmit their communication skills

A honeybee is performing the waggle dance in the center of this photo to communicate the location of a rich nectar source to its nestmates. Heather Broccard-Bell, CC BY-ND By James C. Nieh, University of California, San Diego The Greek historian Herodotus reported over 2,000 years ago on a misguided forbidden experiment in which two children were prevented from hearing human speech so that a king could discover the true, unlearned language of human beings. Scientists now know that human…

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Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Emily Harwitz writes: When Masashi Soga was growing up in Japan, he loved spending time outside catching insects and collecting plants. His parents weren’t big fans of the outdoors, but he had an elementary schoolteacher who was. “They taught me how to collect butterflies, how to make a specimen of butterflies,” Soga recalls. “I enjoyed nature quite a lot.” That early exposure helped foster Soga’s appreciation for nature, he says, and today, Soga is an ecologist at the University of…

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Pablo Neruda was poisoned after U.S.-backed coup in Chile, according to a new report

Pablo Neruda was poisoned after U.S.-backed coup in Chile, according to a new report

NPR reports: International forensic experts delivered a report to justice officials in Chile today regarding the death of the South American country’s famous poet Pablo Neruda — some 50 years ago. A nephew of Neruda tells NPR that scientists found high levels of poison in the poet’s remains. Scientists from Canada, Denmark and Chile examined bone and tooth samples from Neruda’s exhumed body. Neruda died in 1973, just days after the U.S.-backed coup that deposed his friend President Salvador Allende….

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Ancient humans and their early depictions of the universe

Ancient humans and their early depictions of the universe

Astronomy reports: In the Lascaux caves of southwestern France, which are famously adorned with 17,000-year-old paintings, the artist’s subject is almost always a large animal. But hovering above the image of one bull is an unexpected addition: a cluster of small black dots that some scholars interpret as stars. Perhaps it is the eye-catching Pleiades, which Paleolithic hunter-gatherers would have seen vividly in the unpolluted sky. Claims of prehistoric astronomy are controversial. Even if true, we frequently trace our cosmic…

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Ukraine liberated Kherson city. Now, Russia is destroying it, having already looted its cultural treasures

Ukraine liberated Kherson city. Now, Russia is destroying it, having already looted its cultural treasures

The Washington Post reports: Four charred baby cribs were all that was left in the maternity ward’s bomb shelter. The rest of the room was destroyed Wednesday when Russian forces attacked the city, striking one of the only hospitals in Kherson where babies can still be delivered. By fate or luck, many staff, accustomed to near-constant shelling, chose to hide in a nearby corridor rather than run to the place actually meant to keep them safe — a decision that…

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