January 3, 2013 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Science, Technology & Environment
Over the past two decades, the so-called “resource curse” has become one of the central problems of development economics. Academics, politicians, and policymakers have all struggled to understand the paradox of resource-rich countries around the ... Read More »
Ursula K. Le Guin begins her seminal novel The Dispossessed with a characteristically simple yet profound observation about a wall: “Like all walls it was ambiguous and two-faced. What was inside it and what was ... Read More »
December 10, 2012 | Filed under: Children and YA Non-fiction, Science, Technology & Environment
With the passing of Christopher Hitchens in December, and the loss of such icons as Ray Bradbury, Maeve Binchy, and Gore Vidal in the months since, the last year has been one suffused with death ... Read More »
October 16, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
With the passing of Christopher Hitchens in December, and the loss of such icons as Ray Bradbury, Maeve Binchy, and Gore Vidal in the months since, the last year has been one suffused with death ... Read More »
October 16, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
Neil Turok, a South African–born theoretical physicist, is the executive director of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and one of the winners of the 2008 TED Prize, which he received in part for helping ... Read More »
October 1, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
Canadians routinely claim that no policy issue is more important to them than public health care, yet no one wants to have a frank conversation about the sacrifices necessary to keep it. In an attempt ... Read More »
September 11, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
What will happen if I do nothing? Most patients are conditioned to avoid asking that question after a self-assured physician reports the result of a test or investigative procedure that uncovers evidence of a scary ... Read More »
August 15, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
Part memoir, part manifesto, Julie Devaney’s profoundly honest new book should be required reading for anyone who may ever have to visit a hospital – which means, in effect, everyone. The book details Devaney’s painful ... Read More »
August 13, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), popularly known as Mad Cow Disease, is nothing new to science, but over the past two decades the scale of human tragedy and the huge toll on the beef industry due ... Read More »
May 15, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment
Van Gogh. Few other names carry so much cultural weight. Simply mentioning the Dutch painter calls forth myriad associations: the ubiquity of Sunflowers and Starry Night; the mystery of the severed ear; madness; depression; his ... Read More »
February 7, 2012 | Filed under: Science, Technology & Environment