An effort now underway to establish a car-free zone bigger than Manhattan in central Berlin, a relatively dense location where 15% of the surface area is used for road traffic, just might...
Uranium was discovered more than two centuries ago on the fringes of the Habsburg Empire, and proved useful for tinting photos and colouring vases. Now, many people think it can help solv...
The article "Are COVID-19 vaccine mandates human rights violations?" was first published on 24th August 2021 and has been updated on 31st January 2022.
My local pharmacy in Switzerland recently sent me an email that nicely distilled the Omicron era. Your booster is cancelled, it read, because an employee “affected by COVID-19” has left u...
Microsoft was founded a few months after what may have been the first use of the term “internet.” In some ways the two have grown up together. Now, Microsoft wants to enter its next stage...
Occasionally, I hear from people here in Europe that America’s issues with systemic racism are really that country’s alone.
On New Year’s Eve I watched revelers navigate crowded sidewalks on the fringes of San Francisco’s financial district, headed to events like a Gatsby-style bash with bottle service and a B...
The world's economic "firefighter" recently warned of an impending blaze that just might engulf a significant portion of the global population.
An actor on an American soap opera recently sought to sidestep a COVID-19 vaccination mandate by doing something fairly common: requesting a religious exemption. Less common was the way h...
Earth is a constant target of random debris cast off by comets and blasted out of other celestial bodies. Now, we may be in a position to start doing something about it.
When Asghar Leghari sued the Pakistani government for failing to adequately protect people from the impacts of climate change, something surprising happened: he won.
About 200 years ago it became evident that Earth’s atmosphere was doing a pretty good job of retaining life-nourishing warmth. A few decades after that, John Tyndall – a scientist and mou...
Members of the Swiss Guard, the elite soldiers sworn to sacrifice their lives for the Pope since 1506, triggered headlines last month when they decided a workplace COVID-19 vaccine mandat...
One country is doing what’s necessary to limit the destruction delivered by climate change. But you may have to squint to see it on a map.
The Dutch East India Company was probably the biggest corporation in history and frequently paid dividends to shareholders – sometimes in the form of cloves. That enduring largesse, even ...
