Biodiversity down the barrel of a gun

THERE was a time when conservation meant keeping people away from nature. America’s system of national parks, a model for similar set-ups around the world, was based on the idea of limiting human presence to passing visits, rather than permanent habitation.

In recent years this way of doin...Read More

An end to frivolous patents may finally be in sight

DO PATENTS help or hinder innovation? Instinctively, they would seem a blessing, especially for backroom tinkerers. Patenting an idea gives its inventor a 20-year monopoly to exploit the fruit of his labour in the marketplace, in exchange for publishing a full account of how the new produ...Read More

The minefield of writing about Poland

POLAND is the largest and most successful of the eastern European countries. A safe enough statement? Probably not. Someone will immediately start quibbling that “eastern” Europe doesn’t exist. That will start a long argument about whether “east central Europe” or “c...Read More

A feast of drawings in New York

“Old Master drawings offer a special and intimate relationship with artists and their thoughts that paintings cannot provide,” says George Abrams, a prominent Boston-based lawyer. His celebrated collection of 17th-century Dutch drawings began modestly in the early 1960s. (Although he and his late...Read More

Morality was on the menu at this year's Davos summit

BANKER-BASHING and worries about the inability of the world’s systems of governance to tackle increasingly pressing global problems were the underlying themes of the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), held last week in Davos. The best attempt at setting a more positive agenda for r...Read More

A drying out of the stratosphere may help explain recent temperature trends at the Earth’s surface

THE stratosphere—specifically, the lower stratosphere—has, it seems, been drying out. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas, and the cooling effect on the Earth’s climate due to this desiccation may account for a fair bit o...Read More

How will we recharge all the electric cars?

IN THE ten years since hybrid electric vehicles first hit the highways and byways of America, they have come to represent 2.5% of new car sales. Yet, in places like Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, DC, every other car seems to be a Toyota Prius. That is because hybrids like...Read More

Roman Kupchinsky, a scourge of communists and post-communist kleptocrats alike

IN THEIR freedom they had no homeland. And in their homeland they had no freedom. Roman Kupchinsky, a warrior in and out of uniform, who died on January 19th aged 65, was one of the most remarkable of those who fought a seemingly hopeless but ultimately triumpha...Read More

A cosmopolitan show of antiques in New York

VISITORS to New York’s Winter Antiques Show, from January 22nd through the 31st, are greeted with what appears to be a large stained-glass window in many shades of purple. Close up, this work is in fact some two-dozen back-lit objects made of amethyst glass, arranged on shelves against a fa...Read More

Bill Gates worries about falling aid and poor teaching

“HELLO world,” tweeted Bill Gates on January 19th, announcing his entry to the world of Twitter. He has also just launched a blog, called the Gates Notes, and has been at the Sundance film festival, talking about his appearance in the latest film by the director of Al Gore&...Read More