The Wastebook
After a senator calls her research a waste of taxpayer dollars, biologist Sheila Patek heads to Capitol Hill to prove what her science is worth. In December 2015, the fight…
Israel seizes solar panels donated to Palestinians by Dutch government
Monday 03 July 2017 21:09 BST The Netherlands has lodged a complaint with the Israeli government after dozens of Dutch solar panels donated to a West Bank village were confiscated…
Collier’s articles on the conquest of space (1952-1954) – Space Stuff
From March 22, 1952, to April 30, 1954, Collier’s magazine published a series of articles that predicted some aspects of the future with uncanny accuracy. The articles came out in…
Are witches the ultimate feminists?
Sollee’s book positions itself as a whirlwind history of the witch in America and her shared history with sexually liberated women and radical liberationary politics. It’s a bite-sized grimoire than…
Born This Gay
At the turn of the 20th century, a German doctor sets out to prove that homosexuality is rooted in biology—but his research has consequences he never intended. In pre-Nazi Germany,…
Dialect versus language — what’s the big deal?
There are many rubrics that people cite as indicators of a dialect versus a language. Take mutual intelligibility. If two varieties of speech are mutually intelligible, surely they must be…
Private Mohammed Kahn: Civil War Soldier
It is rare to find records of Muslim Civil War soldiers in our holdings. So far, Jesse has only encountered two pensions, and historians know of only about 250 Muslim…
Why solving ‘hidden’ suburban poverty is trickier than helping cities
Suburbs weren’t created to be inclusive places
Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers
In the mid 1940s, no one would publish Kurt Vonnegut’s stories. But when he gets hired as a press writer at General Electric, the company’s fantastical science inspires some of…
Underwater Cloud: Inside the Cables Carrying 99% of Transoceanic Data Traffic – 99% Invisible
Local wireless internet helps promote the feeling that data moves through thin air, but in reality: the vast majority of international data transfers are made possible by underwater cables. These…