Commentary

Tourists are generally seeking more authentic experiences that occur without prescribed paths or known endpoints. Technology can often make the extreme environments of adventure tourism more safe, but at the bottom of the ocean, the vacuum of space or the cold of a mountain summit the consequences of failure can be high.

When photography started to become popular, there was a debate about whether photography was a form of art. It came down to a court case in France in 1861 to decide whether photography could be copyrighted as an art form. Those same questions emerge when considering AI systems that are taught with the internet’s existing images.

While there is no law in the U.S. that regulates what a man can do with his body, the reproductive health of women is now more regulated than it has been in 50 years. And the scope of reproductive health care that women can receive is highly dependent on where they live.

The Southern Baptist Conference’s stance on issues of gender and sexuality have not always been just about fidelity to their interpretation of scripture. Rather, the SBC uses these issues to differentiate itself from other, more progressive denominations.

Many Juneteeth celebrations not only commemorate the end of slavery, but they also honor the generations of Black men and women who have fought to end slavery and for racial justice.

Cormac McCarthy’s unique and varying writing style has been compared with that of many of the greatest authors of American letters, with scholars highlighting connections to the writings of Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner.

Baseless conspiracy theories have at times clouded George Soros’s legacy as one of the world’s biggest donors to causes like higher education, human rights and the democratization of Europe’s formerly communist countries.

How a young war planner became a peace activist is one of the most striking conversion stories in American history. But Ellsberg’s political and moral transformation did not happen in a vacuum. It reflected a titanic shift in public attitudes about the Vietnam War.

In 2022, Amazon returns cost retailers about US$816 billion in lost sales. That’s nearly as much as the U.S. spent on public schools and almost twice the cost of returns in 2020.

A new dialect is taking shape in South Florida, a language variety that came about through sustained contact between Spanish and English speakers, particularly when speakers translated directly from Spanish.

The Espionage Act has historically been employed most often by law-and-order conservatives. But the biggest uptick in its use occurred during the Obama administration, which used it as the hammer of choice for national security leakers and whistleblowers.

On June 2, Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump-appointed federal district court judge in western Tennessee, ruled that Tennessee’s anti-drag “Adult Entertainment Act” violated the First Amendment’s free speech protection.

There is no evidence that shows news outlets are worse off because of Google, Facebook and other aggregators. If anything, evidence (and lots of it) shows that, overall, news outlets would be in worse shape without these digital platforms.

The claim that college students censor viewpoints with which they disagree is now common. Such cynical distortions dominate discussions of higher education today, misinform the public and threaten both democracy and higher education.

At home, at work and in civic spaces, it’s not uncommon to have conversations that make you question the intelligence and benevolence of your fellow human beings. When that argument fails to have the intended persuasive impact, people often grow frustrated, and disagreement becomes conflict. There’s a better way.

Contrary to misconceptions, exposing children to diverse gender identities and expressions supports their natural development. Further, it fosters inclusive and accepting communities and school environments, which is fundamental for developing well-adjusted adults.

The House vote on GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deal with Democratic President Joe Biden to suspend the debt ceiling through Jan. 1, 2025, successful passage was undoubtedly carried by centrists. The middle may be shrinking, but it still exists, and it is critical in a closely divided Congress.

Many Israelis fear that hard-line conservative ministers will roll back LGBTQ rights. And LGBTQ issues are a potent symbol of a chasm fueling debate over the judicial overhaul: secular and religious Israeli Jews’ very different visions of the Jewish state.

This week a group of well-known and reputable AI researchers signed a statement comparing the risk posed by artificial intelligence to pandemics and nuclear war. But its authors should probably be more specific and clarify their concerns.

The Paleo Diet urges us to mimic our prehistoric ancestors’ food choices. In practice, this means eschewing dairy products, cereals, pulses and processed sugar, and consuming vegetables, fruit, nuts, pasture-raised meat and wild-caught seafood instead. Clinical research has yet to substantiate its purported health benefits.

Martin Amis, pre-eminent novelist-critic of his generation, has died at the age of 73. His dazzling, pyrotechnic prose dominated the world of English writing from the mid-1970s through the fin de siècle.

More and more Americans are moving from Democratic-leaning blue states to Republican-voting red ones, and one of the effects of this change is that they are relocating to places with lower life expectancy.

China’s newest hypersonic missile, the DF-27, can fly as far as Hawaii, penetrate U.S. missile defenses and pose a particular threat to U.S. aircraft carriers. This capability threatens to shift the strategic balance of power and leave the U.S. with limited options for assisting Taiwan in the event China invades.

Joe Biden is arguably a provisional figure, and the prospect of his continuing tenure in office demonstrates that the U.S. has not yet moved on from the chaos generated by Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

Drawing on the success of movements like the Black Joy Project, which uses art to promote Black healing and community-building, trans activists are challenging one-dimensional depictions of their community by highlighting the unique joys of being transgender.

Many religious traditions preach the need to care for strangers. But what happens when caring for the stranger comes into conflict with government policy?

Beer and wine helped develop civilization and shaped culture and landscapes over millennia. Today, craft breweries, which are by definition small and independent and thus focus their production on innovative, small-scale methods rather than industrialized, mass-produced ones, are still playing that role.

One year in the next five will almost certainly be the hottest on record and there’s a two-in-three chance a single year will cross the crucial 1.5℃ global warming threshold, an alarming new report by the World Meteorological Organization predicts.

Woodie Guthrie had a lot to say about Congress in general and how it handled the national debt in particular. In his early version of “This Land Is Your Land,” he ended it with his narrator surveying a line of hungry people lined up “by the relief office” and then asked, “Was this land made for you and me?”