Santa isn’t just a myth made up for kids on Christmas. He did exist and he did give generous gifts, though not via chimneys on Dec. 25, as popular legend tells it. By this time next year, you may even be able to visit him in his original setting, say Turkish archaeologists.
Travel is expensive and uncomfortable. You have to get off your couch and leave the house, for one, and the next meal is always a mystery. Unless you travel with K-TV.
Everything you need to know to understand the US president and his intentions for the nation is now neatly summed up in a single symbol for our convenience.
You’re nice. You don’t enjoy others’ suffering, except of course when they’ve done wrong and you want them punished for the transgression. Maybe you’d even pay to watch that justice meted out. That desire is apparently natural in humans and animals, and it starts pretty young.
Once upon a time, the Esalen Institute, just south of Big Sur, California, was a prime destination for radical thinkers. In the 1960s, beat poet Jack Kerouac wrote verse and prose odes to the local scene at the hot springs retreat overlooking the sea. Philosopher Alan Watts talked Zen and Eastern thought to visitors. Psychologist Abraham Maslow illuminated his hierarchy of needs. Psychiatrist Fritz Perl developed Gestalt therapy there, while mythologist Jospeh Campbell elucidated human narrative. Hunter S. Thompson—who’d been a caretaker at the predecessor spa, the Lodge—strode about high and naked, having made it as the first gonzo journalist.
Japan is a land of lovely traditions. When the cherry blossoms bloom in spring, all pack elaborate picnics, go drinking in parks, and admire the flowers. Same goes for summer firefly-viewing. Given this attention to seasonal occurrences, you can imagine that a person’s death is a big event, involving stacks of bento boxes and drinks to toast the deceased.
As humans, it’s difficult to take the long view of history because we’re the new kids on the block, having only been around 3 million years or so. Although you may feel old by the time you’re an adult, the reality is that people are a recent development. The first life forms existed long before our arrival, now confirmed as some 3.5 billion years ago.
What’s the point of inheriting the Earth if it’s only going to burn (or drown)?
Bigger isn’t better when it comes to survival. The mighty dinosaur disappeared long ago while tiny ticks live on, still sucking blood after at least 99 million years.
Technology has made navigation easy for humans, with electronic maps that instruct us aloud so we needn’t learn directions at all. Bees, obviously, don’t have that option, and they also have very small brains—yet their navigation skills rival those of even the most adept human travelers.
Whales and humans have long had a complicated relationship. For centuries, we hunted the massive sea creatures for their oil and meat until they were almost extinct. That stopped last century when replacement materials made it possible to recognize the value of living whales. But human behavior still threatens some species with extinction.
High in the unincorporated Santa Cruz mountains in California, deep in the redwood forest, is a tiny cabin. It was built in 1950 for vacationers, and sits precariously over a hill on crooked wooden stilts. This is where I work and live with a man, a dog, two cats, and two dwarf goats who are housed under the porch.
The largest and oldest living organism on Earth is the Pando clone, a quaking aspen colony of over 47,000 trees in Utah that stretches over 106-acres, weighs 13 million pounds, and is 80,000 years old.
People don’t feel like they favor men at work. We think we treat all people equally, rewarding meritorious performance, not identity. But what if there were data proving otherwise? Would you admit gender bias?
Our destiny should have been obvious. It was written long ago in a poem. First, they came for the rats, and I did not speak out—because I was not a rat.
Pigeons are probably not thinking at the level of philosophers. But we now know their bird brains can handle the abstract concepts of time and space. They even seem to experience these abstractions quite like humans.
Between 1487 and 1834, Spain’s monarchs had a legal policy of forcing religious “heretics,” like Jews and Muslims, to convert to Catholicism or die. At the height of the Spanish Inquisition, 2,000 people were burned at the stake. Today, conservative American legal scholars liken a contemporary Christian baker and business owner to those tortured forced-converts.
It’s up to me to make this memorable. However, if I fail, you’ll want to remember this trick anyway, so start reading aloud.
Right now, predicting the future is a dismal business. In the long view, scientists say prospects are not good for Earth, not at land or sea, not for humanity or the things we’ve built.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? According to scientists studying poetry, it can’t hurt.
The present shapes our study of the past, so archaeologists have typically made prehistory a tale of strong men hunting and farming the fields, while relatively weak women hang around the house doing less physically taxing labor. Except: Old bones tell a different story.
Herpetology is the study of creepy things—literally. Derived from the Greek word herpein, meaning “to creep,” herpetologists go in search of the very creatures most people wish to avoid: amphibians and reptiles like frogs and snakes. Sometimes they also get lucky and discover a totally new creepy species that’s not even in their field.
Though not typically known for their fashion sense, scientists do have style: Creative engineers are pioneering an AI that will be able to design clothes suited to your unique tastes.
There may be nothing new under the sun. But something new was just discovered deep in the ocean.
