Tag
Science
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The Empty Lab, in Science and in Fiction
When literature refuses readers entry into the laboratory, it fosters suspicions of science itself.
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Self-Control Won’t Save You
Neoliberalism offers individuals an illusion of control over their lives. But what happens when uncertainty intrudes?
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Naomi Oreskes: Feminist Science Is Better Science
“Science is stronger if the community is diverse. And recent history supports that.”
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The Dark Matter of Digital Health
Digital health is solidifying the divide between those whose health is valued and those whose health is ignored.
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Public Thinker: Donna M. Riley on Engineering, Ethics, and Social Justice
Donna Riley is a lifelong social activist and student of liberation theology who also happens to be a … [none-for-homepage]
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Dead Cosmonauts, Space Cowboys
Heroes are in the skies. This was true for the Greeks, who named constellations for great hunters and queens; for First Nations astronomers, who told stories …
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What Future for Magic Mushrooms?
Hallucinogenic mushrooms have been used for centuries by numerous indigenous peoples around the world. These fungi appear in Aztec statues (like the one …
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Does Chernobyl Still Matter?
Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom …
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Public Thinker: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on Dark Matter and White Empiricism
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is one of fewer than a hundred Black American women … [none-for-homepage]
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Building Utopia in Space
Utopianism is having a moment. Everything from the box office success of big-budget science fiction films like Interstellar and The Martian to the groundswell of support for the Green New Deal …
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The Failure of Climate Philanthropy
For most large climate funders, environmental protection and a liberal economic order are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing.
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More Nurture, Less Nature?
What if genes weren’t the perfect blueprint we’ve been led to believe they are? What if your body was constantly being shaped by its environment? What if your children’s …
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Our Mothers, Ourselves
I intended to begin with a personal admission. “I didn’t like being pregnant,” I was going to write, before describing the bodily discomforts (hypersalivation!) and psychic stresses (due date during finals!) I experienced while carrying my children. At the end of the review, I would loop back with a second admission: that reading journalist Angela…
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“What Invisibility Looks Like”
Richard S. Leghorn, the Pentagon official who coined the phrase “Information Age,” in 1960, never thought it would catch on. More than half a century later, no …
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Turning History Inside Out
It’s not hard to imagine the Hollywood pitch meeting for an adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s new novel, Washington Black. “It’s 12 Years a Slave meets Jules Verne …
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Unsex the Lab
Kit Owens, the protagonist of Megan Abbott’s Give Me Your Hand, is a postdoc in the research lab of academic rock star Dr. Lena Severin; Severin has just received a prestigious research grant when Kit’s …
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The Future of the Global University
Great universities seek to erase the borders that confine intellectual exchange. The aspiration is at once scholarly and political: policies informed by research will topple …
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Toxic Masculine Cosmology
Cosmologists are obsessed with origin stories. We are the physicists and astronomers who take on the task of explaining why spacetime and its …
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Invisible Algorithms, Invisible Politics
Over the past several decades, politicians and business leaders, technology pundits and the mainstream media, engineers and computer scientists—as well as science …
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The World in a Blot of Ink
What might this be? A moth, a bat, a winged musical conductor, a spaceship? Whatever you may see, you are also looking at Card I of the Rorschach test …
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Science and the Wolf
Once upon a time there was Science. Pure of heart, untainted by the kingdom’s societal structures or geopolitical context, Science was simply Science: an apolitical quest for objective truth and beauty. …
