Have we gotten past these words– “Our nation is moving towards two societies — one white, one black — separate and unequal”– the stark conclusion from the 1968 Kerner Report. Barack Obama’s March 18, 2008 speech, “A More Perfect Union,” focused attention on issues of race and class in America today, but can he take [...]
Colorful parrots abound in our Winners’ Circle slideshow, featuring our prize-winning photos and 15 runners up.
Unable to make ends meet, many families in western Nepal have been forced to sell their daughters, some as young as six, to work far from home as servants in private homes. With living conditions entirely at the discretion of their employers, these girls seldom attend school and are sometimes forced into prostitution. This is [...]
When Dr. Gretchen Berland gave video cameras to three Los Angeles residents in wheelchairs and asked them to film their daily lives, she wasn’t sure what they would capture.
Lisa Taylor, of the Arizona State University Life Sciences Department, found these two jumping spiders of the genus Paraphidippus in Costa Rica. The male (on the right) is guarding the female. The males of this species have larger chelicerae (jaws) than the females, and these jaws may be used for fighting with other males over [...]
American Heart month is over, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of your ticker. Heart disease is still the number one cause of death in the United States. Take a few minutes and get to know this mysterious muscle in our tour of the human heart.
Since natural selection fails to explain why males or females of some species have ostentatious bodily decorations, Darwin suggested that these traits can arise through sexual selection. But since Darwin’s time, new discoveries about animal mating and courtship continue to be made all the time.
“Are the killer robots coming, or aren’t they?” Sharon Weinberger recently asked in the WIRED blog “Danger Room.” In her post, Weinberger plays down fears that an army of autonomous killing machines is in our not-so-distant future. Instead, she says, it is “autonomization of weapons” more generally that is the real pressing issue:
If we ban [...]
The second season of GREAT PERFORMANCES AT THE MET is now broadcast in HD. This week, Roberto Alagna and Anna Netrebko star in “Roméo et Juliette,” conducted by Plácido Domingo.
Sergei Prokofiev’s fanciful musical tale “Peter and the Wolf” is given new life in this innovative new animated interpretation, which won the 2008 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.
