Portside

Experimental archaeology involves moderns crafting Stone Age tools by chipping away at rocks. One reason is to get at the question of what role toolmaking may have played in brain evolution, given the demands this task places on both mental faculties and motor skills.

Angelina Jolie’s public message about her medical decisions related to cancer is about knowing your risks for disease, not hers.

There are plenty of tough and complicated details to sort out. The deal may fall apart, especially with conservatives in both Washington and Tehran-and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his crew-sniping away and looking to subvert any agreement. But as the heated debate continues, it will be important that nonproliferation experts play a critical role in the discourse. Science-based statements, not snarky sound bites, should be the weapons of choice.

. . . the publication of Alfred Wegener’s Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans) . . . was the beginning of a true scientific revolution that transformed geology right down to its core, although the final stage of the revolution was not completed until the 1950s and 1960s.

Rap artist Baba Brinkman doesn't argue for science over religion; he uses evolutionary science to explain religion's origins, function and development.

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Where Right Wing Conspiracies Come From. Burned at McDonald's. Documentary: Peace Officer. Buffett's $1B March Madness Bet. LBJ & the Voting Rights Act.

It's now possible to modify the human germ line, and the rules haven't caught up with the science. The best way to respond to concerns created by emerging knowledge or early-stage technologies is for scientists from publicly-funded institutions to find common cause with the wider public about the best way to regulate — as early as possible. Once scientists from corporations begin to dominate the research enterprise, it will simply be too late.

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