Lessons for the Unpopular and Shocking U.S. Bombing of Iran
High above an ancient battlefield, a small shadow streaks across the sky. If you could follow its flight, you would see a pigeon, fierce and determined, a tiny cylinder strapped to its leg. Inside that cylinder, a message: perhaps a general’s desperate plea for reinforcements or a lover’s words from a besieged city. For thousands…
On a cold dawn in the early 1900s, a lone coyote watched from a distant ridge as men on horseback scattered poison across the frostbitten grass. For decades, scenes like this played out across the American West. Ranchers and government agents waged an all-out war on predators, determined to cleanse the wild landscape of any…
In a dimly lit laboratory sometime in the not-so-distant future, a machine hums softly to itself – a machine no human fully understands. It improves upon its own design in rapid iterations, each version smarter than the last, until the pace of its thinking leaves human intellect far behind. At that moment, the story of…
In maternity wards from Tokyo to Toronto, a curious quietude is growing. Across the world, families are choosing to have fewer children. Where once the average home brimmed with many siblings, now one or two little faces at the dinner table have become common in many societies. This global shift in birth rates is often…
We exist in a time that has been called a “polycrisis.” This means we exist in a confluence of multiple political, economic, and environmental issues which continue to compound each other to a mass-existential level. Although recent times have been an unusual period of comfort and stability the pendulum is swinging to a direction that…
The sun beats down on a whitewashed wall as it has for centuries, but inside the thick adobe dwelling, the air remains surprisingly mild. In an age long before humming air conditioners and electric fans, our ancestors found ingenious ways to beat the heat. Ancient civilizations, from Rome to Persia to the far corners of…
Lately I’ve been very concerned about the online discourse regarding art. It’s not unique that we’re discussing art in the context of consumer culture, but as technology advances and opportunity for economic advancement in the arts declines from the relatively unique reality created in the 20th and early 21st centuries, it’s important for artists to…