My review of “The Innovation Delusion“
Last year, my work took me to Korea, Azerbaijan (i.e., from one end of the Silk Road to the other) and the Netherlands, among other places. Baku, the
Queens, peace and war
The Times (not the New York one, the other one) reports on a study about queens and conquest: In 1588 Queen Elizabeth I promised that if the Spanish
The Women Who Made Male Astronomers’ Ambitions Possible
A nice, unexpected piece by Erin Blakemore in JSTOR Daily about "The Women Who Made Male Astronomers' Ambitions Possible," which talks about my research on Elizabeth Campbell and
Archival work as strategic wandering
I’m in Corvallis for a couple days, doing some work at Oregon State University. My son is here for a rugby camp (how we raised a pair of
Visit to Charles Darwin’s Down House
After I finished my London publicity tour for Rest (which is coming out with Penguin Life in February 2017), my wife and I spent the weekend being tourists. On Saturday
Journeyman + 20
Twenty years ago I published an essay on the psychological and practical aspects of leaving academia. I had recently moved from U.C. Davis to Chicago and a job at Encyclopedia
Something else to look forward to when the 1% get even more: Human sacrifice
Anthropologists and historians have put forward the ‘social control hypothesis’ of human sacrifice. According to this theory, sacrificial rites served as a function for social elites. Human sacrifice
Tim Wu on the “sofalarity”
I missed this in when it first came out in 2014: In his book “What Technology Wants,” Kelly writes: “Technology wants what life wants: Increasing efficiency; Increasing opportunity;
“My Mother’s Lover”
A terrific story, well worth your time on a Sunday morning: The February after my mother died, my brother, Allen, left his New Mexico home and boarded a
Why is scientific sexism so intractably resistant to reform? | Aeon Essays
Science writer Margaret Wertheim writes about sexism in science. One of the many lines that lines struck me: I think about all the young women now being forced