Issue_39
34 articles-
Is the Nobel Prize Good for Science?
Yesterday, CNN Money published an article headlined, “Nobel prize winner tells Clinton: Tax fossil fuels.” The winner in question was Joseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University, who received the prize 15 years ago. As you might expect, the Nobel is hardly his only accolade. He’s not only the World Bank’s former chief economist and […] -
How We Learned That Neanderthals Bird-Hunted in Winter
A stocky male figure walks along a beach in what is now Gibraltar, on the southwestern tip of Europe, his pronounced brow shading his eyes. Pigeons watch over him on the cliffs overlooking the plain. Ducks float in the ocean off in the distance, and crows weave in and out of smoke from fires in […] -
Why We Need Quantitative Sports History
The early 19th century golfer Harry Vardon was the Tiger Woods of his day, and not just because he had marital difficulties. He even had a biography written about him, which recounted, among other things, how he handled losing his first child and living with tuberculosis. But Vardon’s life would be more useful to sports […] -
The Sacred Beauty of a Hermit Thrush Call
On an early morning in June, New York City’s Prospect Park is peaceful and nearly empty: A few people sleeping on benches, a few more walking their dogs, and the birds chirping—exactly what Ben Mirin comes to hear, and they put on quite a show. Whistling, warbling, tweeting, and trilling, the avian residents of Prospect […] -
Will This “Neural Lace” Brain Implant Help Us Compete with AI?
Solar-powered self-driving cars, reusable space ships, Hyperloop transportation, a mission to colonize Mars: Elon Musk is hell-bent on turning these once-far-fetched fantasies into reality. But none of these technologies has made him as leery as artificial intelligence. Earlier this summer at Code Conference 2016, Musk stated publicly that given the current rate of A.I. advancement, […]
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Rooting for the Favorite Is a Sign of Social Dominance
Over the first week of the Rio Olympics, an ancient narrative played out in the men’s rugby sevens tournament. Rising through a field of 12, the Fiji national team dispatched powerhouses New Zealand and Great Britain on its way to a gold medal, the first of any kind for the small South Pacific nation. Having […]
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How Stereotypes Slow Athletes Down
When Simone Manuel received the gold for the women’s 100-meter freestyle swim at the Rio Olympics in early August, the win represented more than just the culmination of Manuel’s many years of training and a victory for her country. It was a triumph over long-held racist stereotypes that black people are poor swimmers. Manuel was […]
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Our Nearest Star Has a Planet, and These Are the Ways It Could Be Habitable
A couple years ago, I was part of the team that discovered the first Earth-sized planet, Kepler-186f, rotating comfortably in its star’s “habitable zone,” where water can be liquid. Its sun, Kepler 186, is faint and far away from us—and a little colder than we’d like if we were to settle there—but it does have […]
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The Uncanny Symbiosis of Modern Religion and Sports
There is a church in Argentina called Iglesia Maradona. In this church, God is football—soccer—and its prophet is the renowned player Diego Armando Maradona. Founded in 1998, the year after the star’s retirement, the Church of Iglesia Maradona now has some 120,000 members worldwide, who bear its insignia D10S—a portmanteau of Dios, the Spanish word […]
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The Unexpected Humanity of Robot Soccer
Robots competing in open, physical environments produce familiar behaviors.
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Four Ball Games You’ve Never Heard Of
From bouncy castle soccer to foot golf, we are still inventing new sports.
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When Exercise Becomes Too Much of a Good Thing
In a world where only 1 in 5 American adults meet the minimum daily exercise requirements, exercise addiction can seem like the opposite of a problem. Don’t let that fool you, says Marilyn Freimuth, a clinical psychologist at Fielding Graduate University, in Santa Barbara. “Exercise addiction can completely take over someone’s life. They’re getting injured, […] -
Beyond What’s Possible: The State of the Art of Athletic Doping
Ever since ancient Greek Olympians downed exotic meats, “magic” potions, and animal hearts and testicles, athletes have tried to improve their performances by consuming special substances. Such behavior wasn’t considered cheating back in ancient times, and this attitude continued into the modern revival of the games. When a runner named Thomas Hicks famously won the 1904 […] -
Why We Shouldn’t Accept Unrepeated Science—Our Author Responds to His Critics
Last month a long thread evolved on Hacker News, a popular discussion forum, in response to my Nautilus article, “We Should Not Accept Scientific Results That Have Not Been Repeated.” Much to my delight, it generated a rich conversation involving scientists and non-scientists alike. That’s fitting, since our inability to independently replicate our results, I […] -
Why the Best Athletes All Have Their Own #PhelpsFace
The importance of the right headspace. -
Why Sports Die
Sports don’t survive their cultures of origin if they resist modern measurement.