Science & Technology Archives - Page 6 of 9

Public Health

Pandemic as a Natural Evolutionary Phenomenon

Human beings forget that they will always share the planet with microbes

May 21, 2020 • by Joshua Lederberg

Pasteur and Darwin Charles Darwin’s role in nineteenth-century thought, how that shapes our own thinking about man’s place in Nature, is too well-known and oft-discussed to bear extensive elaboration on my part. His contemporary, Louis Pasteur, is a culture hero, world-renowned for the human benefits of his germ theory of disease: the ...

Pandemic as a Natural Evolutionary Phenomenon

Public Health

A Spiritual Month in the Cloud

Virtual Seder, makeshift matzoh, and finding joy amidst grief

May 1, 2020 • by Carol Edelstein

The Cloud this April hums with virtual Seders, virtual Easters, virtual gatherings for the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Jews world over subtract from their full glass of wine the ritual drops signifying the ten plagues suffered by the Egyptians when they would not release us from servitude. Dom: water becomes blood Tzfardeyah: frogs overrun ...

Interviews

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

UTA’s Byrd Leavell calls Caroline Calloway “unwell” and regrets his association with the President

April 21, 2020 • by Alexa Mauzy

Leavell is a literary agent, currently at United Talent Agency (UTA), one of Hollywood’s most powerful agencies, representing artists and other professionals in the entertainment industry. Based in Beverly Hills, it has divisions focused on film, television, digital, video games, and music, in addition to books. As the agency’s mission statement puts it, “We help ...

Donald Trump’s Former Book Agent Comes Clean

History

Plague in the Age of Twitter

March 17, 2020 • by Eileen Sperry

COVID-19 has quickly become the outbreak of the digital era. SARS and H1N1 played out on the evening news, but this -- this is happening in real time, in piecemeal, in limited character counts. While epidemics have come and gone before, it feels unprecedented, at least in my lifetime as a 30-something, to ...

Memory

This Atom Bomb in Me

An atomic childhood in Appalachia

January 28, 2020 • by Lindsey A. Freeman

The following is an excerpt, published by permission. My grandfather was an atomic courier…My atomic immersion began when I visited my grandparents as a child and encountered the vibrant matter of Oak Ridge. As an adult, I write about the place to try to untangle its mysteries -- feeling a magnetic ...

Activism

A Public Service

Whistleblowing, Disclosure and Anonymity

December 12, 2019 • by Tim Schwartz

In 1965, 28-year-old Peter Buxtun was hired by the U.S. Public Health Service in San Francisco as a venereal disease investigator. Shortly after starting his job, Buxtun began hearing about a little-known, ongoing study on African-American males with syphilis. To Buxtun’s ears, this didn’t sound right -- by the late ...

Feature

Death by Omission

Power and Politics in the Amazon

September 25, 2019 • by Chris Crews

Celebrity Distractions Shellenberger begins by attacking public celebrities who shared photos that were either not from the Amazon or actually dated back to years earlier: “Celebrities, environmentalists, and political leaders blame Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for destroying the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, which they say is the “lungs of the world.” Singers and ...

Feature

More Precious Than Gold

How a Carbon-based Cryptocurrency Might Save Our Planet

September 19, 2019 • by Gustav Peebles and Ben Luzzatto

Today, we are existentially threatened by our own waste production: atmospheric carbon. But what if we took a cue both from nature and endless generations of farmers, and re-labeled our carbon waste as central, as fertile; as the font of all value in the system? For eons, farmers have known ...

Science & Technology

Will the Idea of Intergenerational Justice Mobilize Us Into Climate Action?

An Interrogation of the Politics of Climate Change

July 10, 2019 • by Tina Sikka

As a result of these factors, climate communication strategies used thus far have just not gained traction. One of the principle questions scientists, social scientists, journalists, and media scholars are currently grappling with is: what is the best way to frame the danger of climate change in a way that ...

Feature

Science Fake and Real

On Enlightenment scientists and the forgotten role of imagination

June 23, 2018 • by Tita Chico

Headlines today pop with accusations that traditional sources of knowledge and even experts are biased, ideological, and unreliable. Accusations of “fake science” have become particularly commonplace. The Heritage Foundation think tank reports on the pervasiveness of fake science, laying the blame on scientists themselves. In their view, climate change isn’t caused by ...

Feature

Economic Impact of Weather Shocks & Climate Change

How can countries cope?

May 25, 2018 • by Michael Flaherty and Isabella Rigamonti

On Thursday, April 12, The New School hosted, in conjunction with the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), a lecture on the economic impacts of climate change and the opportunities to both adapt to and mitigate it. Economic Impacts of Weather Shocks & Climate Change is a continuation of ...

Economic Impact of Weather Shocks & Climate Change

The Internet

Privacy and Surveillance

Who are we in the age of social media and reality television?

May 17, 2018 • by Deandra Irizarry

We currently live in an age of constant surveillance. As users of the Internet, whether or not we consent our information is being shared to companies and businesses for their own benefit. Social media thus has become a form of surveillance in which we share details about our lives and ...