The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming

Our home galaxy is the first frontier into space. It may appear to be a cliche with all those stars and planets, but the more scientists uncover, the more fantastic the galactic system becomes. There are dark matter storms, strange signals, and other first-time events. While great new finds are fodder for solving old questions,

What are the causes of violence? Why does it exist in the world? Even today, many people believe that some individuals are just violent and there is no sense in trying to understand it or do anything about it. Others have sought deeper explanations to understand the underpinnings of violence. Enlightenment liberalism has taught us

The Ptolemaic Kingdom is an interesting part of history. Its rise and fall were bookended by the deaths of two of the most famous figures of ancient history: Alexander the Great and Cleopatra. The Ptolemies were very protective of their lineage. They were Greek rulers in Egypt. They often married siblings to maintain the bloodline.

Art is the expression and interpretation of the human imagination in an intelligible way—a way that causes a meaningful conscious experience. Some might argue that without art, life would be meaningless, but without meaning, there would be no art, and meaning requires a conscious subject to give it such. In a very real way, we

Some of the fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat today are man-made hybrids. They were created through selective breeding, a process whereby only plants with favorable traits are replanted. In rare instances, insects were responsible for creating the hybrid plants through cross-pollination. However, the insects would not have been able to cross-pollinate the plants if

Even before the humble beginnings of philosophy in ancient Greece, humans have been obsessed with the idea of substances, where one material ends and another begins, and the general building blocks of life. But over the thousands of years that we’ve studied various materials, we’ve developed a good idea of what’s what. With the science

Most people do not like to think too much about cemeteries. We tend to visit them only as often as we need to and then leave as quickly as is decently possible. This is a shame, because there are some cemeteries that are well worth closer inspection. Though in modern times, we tend to be