In my previous post, I summarized Judge Jed Rakoff’s objections to all the reasons federal prosecutors have given for failing to charge top financial executives with criminal wrongdoing. So, what explains the hesitance to bring to justice those who contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? In his speech before New York […]
Children around the world are less aerobically fit than their parents were as kids, a decline that researchers say could be setting them up for serious health problems once they’re grown up. Children today take 90 seconds longer to run a mile than kids did 30 years ago, according to data from 28 countries. Children’s […]
With the recent discovery in Munich of €1bn (£860m) worth of art looted by the Nazis, and the forthcoming release of a feature film, starring George Clooney, based on the exploits of the Monuments Men, it is a fitting time to recall how fortunate we are that so much art survived the second world war. […]
FOR many education advocates, the arts are a panacea: They supposedly increase test scores, generate social responsibility and turn around failing schools. Most of the supporting evidence, though, does little more than establish correlations between exposure to the arts and certain outcomes. Research that demonstrates a causal relationship has been virtually nonexistent. A few years […]
Is there an activity that Americans give more of their attention to and know less about than professional football? The essence of N.F.L. life is the intense weeklong process of preparation for Sunday, which takes place at the thirty-two N.F.L. team “facilities.” The New York Jets allowed me to spend more than a year with […]
Waste looks like the pile of plastic, Styrofoam, and cardboard that your tiny new earphones came in. It looks like plastic bottles overflowing in the waste bin beside a water fountain. It looks like a Hummer occupied by a single person. But few people think about waste when they post kitty photos on Facebook. The […]
Remember Tamagotchis? Of course you do. They taught you about responsibility. They taught you about friendship. And perhaps most importantly, they taught you that friends don’t leave friends in feces-filled rooms for days at a time—because then they will die. But now, it’s time to impart that wisdom on a new generation. Rejoice, friends, for […]
A mysterious blast of light spotted earlier this year near the constellation Leo was actually the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and was triggered by an extremely powerful stellar explosion, new research reports. On April 27, several satellites — including NASA’s Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope — observed an unusually bright burst of […]
One afternoon in October 2005, neuroscientist James Fallon was looking at brain scans of serial killers. As part of a research project at UC Irvine, he was sifting through thousands of PET scans to find anatomical patterns in the brain that correlated with psychopathic tendencies in the real world. “I was looking at many scans, […]
Palaeontologists on Friday announced they had uncovered the remains of one of the greatest land predators ever – a nine-metre (30-foot) four-tonne dinosaur that stalked the planet 100 million years ago. The newly-discovered species has been called Siats meekerorum, whose first name honours a cannibalistic monster in the mythology of the Native American Ute people. […]