Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

Genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter has created a synthetic cell that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism.

Bookmark

In the 21st century, we are inundated with news about human-induced climate change. But perhaps human-produced media are not the only source of information.

Bookmark

The librarian was nondescript in the way that everyone standing behind a counter is, probably in her 30s, with straight, fox-colored hair.

Bookmark

Click to view The problem with bio-art is that it's often made of living tissue — and sometimes living tissue gets out of control.

Bookmark

Almost a decade ago I attended a conference called “1968” at a nondescript college in New Jersey. Mark Rudd, a student radical turned community college math instructor living out his retirement…

Bookmark

The ancestors of modern humans interbred with Neanderthals and another extinct line of humans known as the Denisovans at least four times in the course of prehistory, according to an analysis…

Bookmark

For Paul Virilio the last remaining defense against the crumbling world economy is to abandon the ship, lift our heads to the sky and join in the exurbanist future of the…

Bookmark

What makes us different from all these things? What makes us different is the particulars of our history, which gives us our notions of purpose and goals.

Bookmark

The decisive violence imposed on life by the capitalist mode of production derives from its quest for radical simplification.

Bookmark

A few weeks ago on this site I reviewed John Robb’s book Brave New War, discussing the potential of reconfiguring heritage preservation from a top-down, hierarchical model into a participatory, two-way,…

Bookmark

Eating raw meat and making stone tools may be behind the smaller teeth and faces of humans compared with their ancient relatives. Meat and tools, not the advent of cooking, was…

Bookmark

You have now reached your allowance of 3 free articles in the last 30 days. Don’t worry—to get another 7 articles absolutely free, just enter your email address in the box…

Bookmark

IF you ever have the good fortune to see a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the experience might go like this: On a sunny morning in Yosemite National Park, you walk through…

Bookmark

In Berlin's Neues Museum, there sits a 3,000-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti. The priceless artifact is under glass, kept safe by alarms, and watched by security guards. Last year, it was…

Bookmark

On the second floor of a nondescript warehouse owned by New York City's Sanitation Department in East Harlem is a treasure trove—filled with other people's trash. Most of the building is…

Bookmark

Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee’s jaw…

Bookmark

Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Svante Paabo sequenced Neanderthal genes but what does it tell us about modern humans?

Bookmark

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — The move didn’t make sense to the humans packed into the sixth floor of Seoul’s Four Seasons hotel. But the Google machine saw it quite differently. The…

Bookmark

Genomics entrepreneur Craig Venter has created a synthetic cell that contains the smallest genome of any known, independent organism.

Bookmark

In the 21st century, we are inundated with news about human-induced climate change. But perhaps human-produced media are not the only source of information.

Bookmark

It’s been nearly 160 years since we Homo sapiens, or “wise people,” first got an inkling through Charles Darwin and the discovery of Neanderthal remains that we are just another evolving…

Bookmark

Click to view The problem with bio-art is that it's often made of living tissue — and sometimes living tissue gets out of control.

Bookmark

The ancestors of modern humans interbred with Neanderthals and another extinct line of humans known as the Denisovans at least four times in the course of prehistory, according to an analysis…

Bookmark

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Edward E. Baptist Basic Books, $35 (cloth)

Bookmark

What makes us different from all these things? What makes us different is the particulars of our history, which gives us our notions of purpose and goals.

Bookmark

The decisive violence imposed on life by the capitalist mode of production derives from its quest for radical simplification.

Bookmark

The New York Times’ March 1, 2016 story “Swiping a Priceless Antiquity … With a Scanner and a 3-D Printer” by Charly Wilder tells how two German artists made a surreptitious, unauthorized…

Bookmark

Eating raw meat and making stone tools may be behind the smaller teeth and faces of humans compared with their ancient relatives. Meat and tools, not the advent of cooking, was…

Bookmark

IF you ever have the good fortune to see a Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, the experience might go like this: On a sunny morning in Yosemite National Park, you walk through…

Bookmark

TORONTO, Canada - The mood is haunting at Morehshin Allahyari’s first solo exhibition in Canada, as a dozen reconstructed artefacts destroyed by Islamic State (IS) group fighters look up from ledges…

Bookmark

On the second floor of a nondescript warehouse owned by New York City's Sanitation Department in East Harlem is a treasure trove—filled with other people's trash. Most of the building is…

Bookmark

Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee’s jaw…

Bookmark

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — The move didn’t make sense to the humans packed into the sixth floor of Seoul’s Four Seasons hotel. But the Google machine saw it quite differently. The…