We can all remember seeing images of medieval Europeans wearing pointy shoes, but most of us have paid scant attention to the shoes themselves. That may be for the best, since the more we dwell on one fact of life...
Image by Kenneth Zirkel, via Wikimedia Commons There have been many theories of how human history works. Some, like German thinker G.W.F. Hegel, have thought of progress as inevitable. Others have embraced a more static view, full of “Great Men” and...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jgev_YGl44 One would count neither Elon Musk nor Neil deGrasse Tyson among the most reserved public figures of the twenty-first century. Given the efforts Musk has been making to push into the business of outer space, which has long been...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJtiPRDIqtI Not everyone on August 1, 1981 had a VCR at their disposal, and not everybody stayed up until midnight. But fortunately at least one person did, in order to tape the first two hours of a new cable channel...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXD8l8JFk6E Note: Yesterday, Marianne Faithfull passed away at age 78. In her memory, we’re bringing back a favorite from deep in our archive. It originally appeared on our site in June 2012. When you want to learn a thing or...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8--Ep_g9UY It’s practically guaranteed that we now have more stupid people on the planet than ever before. Of course, we might be tempted to think; just look at how many of them disagree with my politics. But this unprecedented stupidity...
Several years ago, Google launched a series of Career Certificates that will “prepare learners for an entry-level role in under six months.” Their first certificates focused on Project Management, Data Analytics, User Experience (UX) Design, IT Support and IT Automation. And...
A 600-year-old manuscript—written in a script no one has ever decoded, filled with cryptic illustrations, its origins remaining to this day a mystery…. It’s not as satisfying a plot, say, of a National Treasure or Dan Brown thriller, certainly not...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHUcU0RgOM Several generations of American students have now had the experience of being told by an English teacher that they’d been reading Robert Frost all wrong, even if they’d never read him at all. Most, at least, had seen his...
Image via Wikimedia Commons In 590 AD, Pope Gregory I unveiled a list of the Seven Deadly Sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – as a way to keep the flock from straying into the thorny...
