Essay Is artificial intelligence today where brain research was 100 years ago? June 02, 2021 Babies are not born with randomly connected brains and turned on to learn. And yet, 100 years ago, neurobiologists were not so sure. Read More
Essay How to make money in nanoseconds May 28, 2021 A geodesic is the shortest path on Earth’s surface between two given locations. From a professional trader’s point of view, the locations that nowadays matter most are not exchanges’ historic city-centre headquarters, but a couple of dozen unremarkable, mainly suburban buildings in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, buildings that usually could pass for a warehouse. Read More
Essay The paradox of Chinese politics May 28, 2021 What should we make of a political system that is often repressive and not accountable to its people in elections, and yet can also be responsive to public opinion? That is the paradox of China’s political system in the twenty-first century. Read More
Essay The world of Martin Luther May 25, 2021 The nineteenth century commemorated the Protestant hero Martin Luther with giant statues on a host of town squares across Germany. Read More
Essay I spent a year and a half at a ‘no-excuses’ charter school – this is what I saw May 19, 2021 Charter schools are 30 years old as of 2021, and the contentious debate about their merits and place in American society continues. Read More
Essay From equal rights to full rights May 18, 2021 The Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1923, has resurfaced in 2021 after a long sleep. Whether it becomes part of the US Constitution is anyone’s guess, as is the practical effect of such a change given the conservative tilt of the Supreme Court. Read More
Essay Correcting the wealth gap May 14, 2021 With the tax season in full swing, it is wort reflecting on the purposes that taxes serve in society. One is state revenue; ensuring the acceptance of state issued currency in which taxes must be paid is another; and addressing inequality the third. Read More
Interview Navigating college as a first generation student: An interview with Alvina Atkinson May 12, 2021 There is a startling disparity in the number of female math PhDs and tenured professors, as evidenced by the most recent research from the American Mathematical Society showing the percentage of men vs. women who earned a PhD in Math and are tenured. Read More
Essay Jenny White on the graphic novel and the complicated roots of political violence May 10, 2021 I first arrived in Turkey as a young woman in 1975 to study at Ankara’s Hacettepe University, unaware that Turkey was experiencing a low-level civil war. Read More
Essay Mothers, by default May 07, 2021 A few weeks ago, I sat down with a mom I’ll call Erica to talk about how she and her family have navigated the challenges of this past pandemic year. Read More
Essay The trees in your life May 07, 2021 The Earth supports about sixty thousand tree species. I wonder, how many of them would you come across in an average day? Read More
Essay How Hume anticipated Darwin May 06, 2021 It’s a great irony that many still believe Darwin’s theory of evolution was a sudden, startling revelation rather than itself being the fruit of the evolution of ideas. Read More
Essay ‘You try not to eat’: What joblessness means for low‑paid women in Pennsylvania May 04, 2021 Losing your job is difficult for anyone, but for working-class women without savings it is even harder. Sarah Damaske talked to women in low-wage jobs in Pennsylvania who struggled to afford to feed their families or pay for childcare so they could look for work. Read More
Essay Turkish Kaleidoscope musical playlist April 28, 2021 The Turkish Kaleidoscope Musical Playlist is a kaleidoscopic view of the musical backdrop from 1970s Turkey. It explores the music scene of the period, from Anatolian rock & pop to modern & traditional folk music (türkü) and arabesk. Read More
Essay “Say it came from Billie” April 26, 2021 Anyone who’s ever seen Sugar “Kane” Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe)—dressed in a form-fitting black skirt, frilly overcoat, and flapper hat, carrying a fiddle in one hand and a small, boxy suitcase in the other—making her grand entrance at the Chicago train station in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) likely still has a relatively sharp memory of it intact. Read More