Two new books — one by a Roman Catholic journalist, the other by an atheist novelist — offer modern responses to the difficult concept that Jesus was both mortal and divine.

Researchers have developed two new broadband acoustic systems that could represent a major improvement in how fish and other marine life are counted and classified.

A Tel Aviv University researcher has found that young men who smoke are likely to have lower IQs than their non-smoking peers.

Some of the most innovative baseball teams have rebuilt their teams this year around an ascendant strategy that defense is the key to victory. But can nifty glovework please homer-hungry fans?

David Brooks writes that the recession has helped teach Americans about the dangers of debt, "but there’s probably going to have to be a public crusade — like the ones against littering and smoking — to hammer the point home."

Dorothy Parker's popularity may have been part of the reason that academia was slow to take up her poetry, writes R. S. Gwynn. But now even feminists have taken her into the literary canon.

Has the culture of "white 20-somethings dressed in skinny jeans and lumberjack shirts, and wearing thick-rimmed glasses" begun its inevitable decline?

Twenty-one years ago, the term "mommy track" was born. Angie Kim thinks the concept "needn't be the dull fate feminists predicted — and, increasingly, it's not."

David Lewis-Williams doesn't think direct arguments against religion will have much effect on men unless they are gradually illuminated by science.

Edith Grossman found trying to translate Cervantes' 400-year old masterpiece "Don Quixote" into modern English somewhat… Quixotic.

Many people were left gasping when President Obama unveiled his new plan for outer space, including his proposal to cancel NASA’s Constellation program. It turns out that the great recession […]

At last, a new Ian McEwan novel: Solar. The author’s website recites a list of reviews; there are so many. Tucked among them is a nod to a blog post […]

President Obama announced Wednesday that he will open up huge new coastal areas to offshore drilling. The plan would make new areas off the coasts of Virginia and Alaska and […]

The New School University anthropologist thinks insects are “astonishingly beautiful,” both individually and en masse.

The New School anthropologist explains why, instead of killing bugs, we should pay attention to them and think about their place in the world around us.

There’s a lot of irrational fear of insects among humans, but there are some that can be lethal.

The New School anthropologist explains how using language about insects in reference to people can lead to violent acts.

Some men find videos of women crushing insects a turn-on, which the professor thinks is probably connected to their size, sound and texture.

People tend to think of insects as having very rigid and well-developed social organization. During the Cold War, insect colonies were considered examples for how communist social systems should work.

People project their fears, desires, and yearnings onto insects, and many of our ideas about society and social organization have been worked out on them.