We Weren’t Meant to Be Alone All the Time Some days I go to a co-operative workspace for a few hours just to get out of my house. Yes, it costs money, which is calculated by the number of days a week one wants to occupy a temporary desk, but that seems a small price to pay for colleagues when your occupation is a solitary one, such as a writer. The idea behind cooperative open works spaces is not to spend so much time…
Woman the Able Hunter As we have been culturally taught, women are considered the “weaker” sex and yet given the chance, women can easily rise to the challenge of unscrewing a jar, opening a stuck window, and moving furniture using a little ingenuity. And now, a recent study of an archaic tool called the atlatl, or spear thrower, proves that this kind of female ingenuity has been serving women for centuries and making them competent hunters alongside men. The atlatl is a simple J-shaped piece of carved wood with a…
The Answer is No Humans have the largest brain-to-body ratio of any animal. We have giant, complicated, brains that should make us the smartest animals on Earth. But oddly, we spend so much of our time trying to dull that intelligence—we drink alcohol, take drugs, go shopping, have sex, watch TV, look at our phones for hours, read, talk to each other a lot, and spend most of the day with useless thoughts wandering through all those brain cells. In other words, we have big brains but can’t handle…
How Natural History Museums Around the World Are Dusting Off Their Vast Collections to Answer the Most Critical Questions of Our Time The group of third graders being led through the Hall of Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City have no idea. The couple from California admiring the stuffed African elephant standing proudly in the rotunda of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington D.C. is clueless. The group of older visitors taking the “Nature Walk” to view various recreated animal habitats at the Chicago…