"I don't remember a time like this": Christina Lamb on rising global conflict
New Humanist
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29m ago
HowTheLightGetsIn is the world’s largest ideas and music festival, taking place from 24-27 May in Hay-on-Wye. As a long-standing festival partner, we’ve curated a series of interviews and articles with some of the fascinating expert speakers. We’re also offering an exclusive 20% discount on tickets to all of our readers, with the code NEWHUM24. Don't miss out on discounted tickets here. Christina Lamb is chief foreign correspondent of the Sunday Times and a bestselling author of books including "Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does To Women" and "The Girl from Aleppo". She will be spe ..read more
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Beyond the two cultures
New Humanist
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29m ago
"Humanism” in the modern sense was fleshed out as a worldview in the 20th century, although its roots go deeper. The idea originated in a desire to find a philosophical approach to life that would provide a basis for morality, meaning and hope in the world we live in, without having to resort to religious authority or supernatural explanations. From its origins to the present, humanist thinkers have had to confront the apparent opposition between the sciences on the one hand, and the arts and humanities on the other. This is partly because humanism itself has a foot in both camps. Several of ..read more
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Review: Carmageddon
New Humanist
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1w ago
Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What To Do About It (Abrams Press) by Daniel Knowles At the Conservative party conference last year, our prime minister chose to talk about “a war on motorists”, claiming to be on the side of the driver. If there is such a war, it is one that the motorists seem to be winning. The number of cars on the roads in the UK grows every year, as it does globally. Carmageddon is an authoritative, exhaustive account of how these machines came to dominate almost every aspect of our lives and the damage they have done on the way. It also attempts to take some ste ..read more
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Alien civilisations
New Humanist
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1w ago
Rarely has there been a television project that looked so good on paper. 3 Body Problem, which will be released on Netflix on 21 March, is an adaptation of a critically acclaimed Chinese science fiction trilogy by Liu Cixin. Since its first appearance in English translation in 2014, the trilogy has sold over nine million copies around the world. Among its fans are Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and George R. R. Martin, who recommended the first of the books on his influential blog back in 2015, describing it as “very unusual” and praising the work of translator Ken Liu. Perhaps it was thanks t ..read more
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Dinosaur dreams and nightmares
New Humanist
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2w ago
Many adults can still name a favourite dinosaur. From the bunting-like triangles along the back of a stegosaurus, to the mace-like balled tail of the ankylosaurus, to the armour-plated horns and collar of a triceratops, there is something impossibly thrilling about their wildly ranging scale and fantastical features. My favourite, as a child, was the archaeopteryx, a giant flying reptile. Even the name was complex and mysterious. More than the painting of what the living creature might have looked like, it was the photographs of fossilised remains that captivated me: the contorted, impossible ..read more
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How the cuppa changed the world
New Humanist
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2w ago
When at home in west London, there’s nothing better than sitting down with a mug of builder’s tea. That said, a bowl of spicy Indian masala chai with its feeling of embracing my Kenyan-British-Indian heritage is even more likely to hit the spot. I’m so in thrall to the beverage that I have an Instagram account full of images of cups imbibed whenever I travel. I associate the drink with soothing warmth in times of trouble, as well as with celebrating good news and catch-ups with friends and family. Or at least I did until my visit to “茶, चाय, Tea” at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, south-e ..read more
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How many bird species have gone extinct?
New Humanist
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3w ago
Humans have not been good for the bird population. We know that Homo sapiens has caused the extinction of hundreds of species, as indicated by fossils and written records. However, most of this data was recorded after the 1500s, so our ability to estimate accurately has been limited. Now, a team of scientists from Sweden and the UK, led by Rob Cooke of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, has used statistical modelling to come up with a new estimate. By looking at historical figures and taking into account the likely number of undocumented extinctions, the team concluded that humans may h ..read more
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Why 'designer yeast' is a breakthrough
New Humanist
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3w ago
Back in 2010, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in San Diego announced they had synthesised a new organism. They had created a complete genome of a bacteria and used it to “boot up” a cell whose native genome had been removed. The result was arguably the first truly synthetic organism. This kind of synthetic biology research could eventually enable as yet unimagined bioengineering, leading to the creation of new synthetic fuels, foods and medicines, helping to tackle challenges such as carbon capture. Bacteria are, however, relatively simple single-celled organisms. The next stage i ..read more
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Is graphene the key to green technology?
New Humanist
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1M ago
Graphene. The wonder kid of the materials world. At just one atom thick, this special configuration of carbon burst onto the scene in 2004 after it was first isolated and experimented on by a team at the University of Manchester. For this, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded just six years later – a sign of the truly remarkable and significant physics that this super 2D material exhibits. From interesting magnetic and quantum properties to excellent electrical conductivity, stronger than steel and with high resistance to heat damage, graphene is a physics playground. But it also has huge p ..read more
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Meet the Russian feminists opposing Putin's war
New Humanist
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1M ago
Editor's note: This article was published in print the day before Alexei Navalny was pronounced dead, on 16th February 2024. For Sasha Skochilenko, life in a Russian prison cell began with five small slips of paper. Each had been designed to mimic an ordinary shopping label – but instead of prices, they bore information on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. One described the Russian bombardment of an art school in Mariupol, where 400 civilians had been seeking shelter. Another held a personal plea: “My great-grandfather didn’t fight in the Second World War for four years so that Russia could becom ..read more
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