Paul Barach Aug 2, 2016 Image from www.imgc.allpostersimages.com [Note: The following contains graphic descriptions of warfare] By the spring of 1915, The Great War had already scattered the shredded, rotting flesh of men and boys across the once lush Belgian fields of Ypres. Bloated corpses bobbed…

Still from Primitive Technology. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwp. Thwp. Thwack . The sound of stone striking wood. Rustling leaves. A loud crack as a tree falls. A dry whirring of insects. Further off, a monkey shrieks. Shhpt . Shhpt . Water purls over stones in a brook; the heavy pitter-patter of rain…

by A. G. Hopkins Whether commentators assert that the United States is resurgent or in decline, it is evident that the dominant mood today is one of considerable uncertainty about the standing and role of the “indispensable nation” in the world. The triumphalism of the 1990s has long faded;…

Places that once mattered. Photographer: Norbert Millauer/AFP/Getty Images Photographer: Norbert Millauer/AFP/Getty Images British writer David Goodhart's "somewhere versus anywhere" framework , pitting those who are left behind by modernity versus globalist cosmopolitans, has worked for many people…

Chinese police are sporting high-tech sunglasses that can spot suspects in a crowded train station, the newest use of facial recognition technology that has drawn concerns among human rights groups. In a scene reminiscent of the dystopian sci-fi television show “Black Mirror”, officers in the…

Whether your New Year’s resolution involves taking up painting, managing stress, cultivating a more positive outlook, or building a business empire, the late television artist Bob Ross can help you stick it out. Like Fred Rogers’ Mr Rogers' Neighborhood , Ross’ long-running PBS show, did not…

The Death of Clothing

Three years ago I came across an interesting paper written up by a Microsoft employee, Kent Sullivan, on the process and findings of designing the new user interface for Windows 95. The web page has since been taken down – one reason why I’m a bit of a digital hoarder. It specified some of the…

On the second Tuesday in June, I start to feel fluish. If this is 2016 and I’m still a freelance writer, I’m losing money immediately on the assignments I can’t complete because my vision is blurry and my thoughts are erratic. If this is 2013, I am soon taken off the roster at the cafe where I work.…

Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Maya ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough. Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications. The landscape, near already-known Maya…

There is nothing to prevent Indian farmers, which include some of the world’s biggest food producers, from exporting their chickens and other related products overseas.Photograph: Dinodia Photos/Alamy Chickens raised in India for food have been dosed with some of the strongest antibiotics known to…

Illustration: NASA Advertisement Editor’s Picks Interplanetary GPS Comes a Step Closer Earth-Size Radio Telescope Opens Its Eye Researchers Propose InterGalactic Positioning System (IGPS) At the American Astronomical Society’s 231st meeting , in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, Keith Gendreau,…

Artifacts uncovered in the excavation at Attirampakkam. (Sharma Center for Heritage Education) Humanity’s origin story has gotten increasingly tangled in recent years: New discoveries suggest that Homo sapiens interacted and interbred with other species and ventured out of Africa in more than one…

Why 2017 Was the Best Year in Human History Leer en español Some young refugees who fled war in Syria now live in Germany. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times We all know that the world is going to hell. Given the rising risk of nuclear war with North Korea, the paralysis in Congress,…

In early 2014, Srikanth Thirumalai met with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Thirumalai, a computer scientist who’d left IBM in 2005 to head Amazon’s recommendations team, had come to propose a sweeping new plan for incorporating the latest advances in artificial intelligence into his division. He arrived…

Library of Congress / British Library / Getty / Will Mullery / The Atlantic T o my knowledge , no one has ever been killed by a plummeting bird feeder. Still, when you live on the 25th floor of a Manhattan high-rise, you can’t hang one outside the window and risk knocking off a pedestrian below.…

Animation by Lisa Larson-Walker. Photo by Thinkstock. A few weeks after the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, several people working for the U.S. Embassy in Cuba fell mysteriously ill. Some lost their hearing. Some had headaches and a pain in one ear. Others reported feeling dizzy or…

The BBS (bulletin board system) scene of the 80s and 90s was a magical time. Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up…

Illustration by Ben Kirchner Audio: Listen to this story. To hear more feature stories, download the Audm app for your iPhone. In a canyon in the Rocky Mountain Front above Fort Collins, Colorado, a young man named Jordan Temkin is flying his drone. He wears goggles that show him a video feed from a…

By “I have some clients who look up on my wall and say, ‘Where did you go to law school?’ and aren’t too happy with the answer.” ~ Ivan Fehernbach , self-taught lawyer This weekend, thousands of young prospective lawyers across the nation will receive the results of the July 2015 bar exam. Those who…

An artist's rendition of the temperate, Earth-size worlds of TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star nearly 40 light years from Earth. Such planets are high-priority targets in the search for life elsewhere in the universe. Credit: NASA and JPL-Caltech Imagine stepping into a time machine, one that could…

In the popular imagination, the history of sex is a straightforward one. For centuries, the people of the Christian West lived in a state of sexual repression, straitjacketed by an overwhelming fear of sin, combined with a complete lack of knowledge about their own bodies. Those who fell short of…

I had a tough time in high school. Like many other young adolescents, I saw myself as fundamentally flawed, and felt a searing isolation. Nothing I looked forward to brought any hope. I stopped getting out of bed. I cut myself. I drafted a suicide note. It was a terrible time that I wouldn’t wish on…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Initial tests in Nevada on a compact nuclear power system designed to sustain a long-duration NASA human mission on the inhospitable surface of Mars have been successful and a full-power run is scheduled for March, officials said on Thursday. National Aeronautics and Space…

W ork is the master of the modern world. For most people, it is impossible to imagine society without it. It dominates and pervades everyday life – especially in Britain and the US – more completely than at any time in recent history. An obsession with employability runs through education. Even…

Y esterday I was in Anaheim giving a talk called “Industry Lifecycles.” It was intended to be a brief summary of the blog post of the same title, with a dash of material from my recent post on game economics . Now, that latter post resonated quite a lot. There was lengthy discussion on more Internet…

As far as cyberpunk culture goes, I’m a relative newcomer. I was unaware of the consolidation of futuristic, dark neo-noirs and conspiracy thrillers with urban environments as their backdrops as an entire genre until the summer of 2014, when I first watched the anime series Psycho-Pass . Three and a…

the textile industry accounts for more greenhouse-gas emissions than all international flights and maritime shipping combined; as recycling markets break down, its contribution could soar

Jann Horn Source: Stiftung Jugend forscht e. V. Source: Stiftung Jugend forscht e. V. In 2013, a teenager named Jann Horn attended a reception in Berlin hosted by Chancellor Angela Merkel. He and 64 other young Germans had done well in a government-run competition designed to encourage students to…

Listen to Narration In April of 1873, an unhappy man walked along Clark Street in downtown Chicago. His name was Aymar de Belloy. There was a gun in his pocket, and a nickel – enough for one final glass of beer. He entered Kirchoff’s tavern and sat at a table, then changed his mind about the beer.…

It was late November and former Intel Corp. engineer Thomas Prescher was enjoying beers and burgers with friends in Dresden, Germany, when the conversation turned, ominously, to semiconductors. Months earlier, cybersecurity researcher Anders Fogh had posted a blog suggesting a possible way to hack…

I n the winter of 1906, the year San Francisco was destroyed by an earthquake and SOS became the international distress signal, Britain's Punch magazine published a dark joke about the future of technology. Under the headline, "Forecasts for 1907," a black and white cartoon showed a well-dressed…

Beijing bets on facial recognition in a big drive for total surveillance CHONGQING, China For 40-year-old Mao Ya, the facial recognition camera that allows access to her apartment house is simply a useful convenience. CCTV footage taken in Beijing uses the facial-recognition system Face++. China,…

David Pilling January 5, 2018 Imagine two people. Let’s call them Bill and Ben. Bill is a mid-ranking investment banker who clears £500,000 a year after tax. Ben is a gardener who takes home £25,000. Who is better off? If we judge them by their income, then Bill is clearly richer; 20 times richer,…

It’s arguably the most iconic photograph of the 20th century: the Earth rising above the Moon’s bleached and desolate horizon, a breathtaking jewel of color and life more than 230,000 miles away. In December 1968, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders returned from history’s…