Mikhail Khodorkovsky's fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?... more

In 1807, a Broadwood square grand piano, no. 10651, was taken by canal from London north to Lancaster for a John Langshaw, organist. Therein lies a story... more

The fetishization of change is a symptom of a deep intellectual malaise in modern education theory, where truth, knowledge, and meaning have merely a provisional character... more

Mikhail Khodorkovsky's fate stands as a warning, not only to Russians, but to the West. Why is the Kremlin so afraid to see him set free?... more

In 1807, a Broadwood square grand piano, no. 10651, was taken by canal from London north to Lancaster for a John Langshaw, organist. Therein lies a story... more

The fetishization of change is a symptom of a deep intellectual malaise in modern education theory, where truth, knowledge, and meaning have merely a provisional character... more

Dogs do it, lions do it, even babies in the womb do it, and though weird theories abound, nobody really knows why we yawn... more

Françoise d'Aubigné: born in a prison to a murderer, was a child beggar, then later on governess to Louis XIV's children, and finally his mistress and wife... more

When Jane Austen doesn't like a character in one of her novels, she ceases to be the subtle, witty ironist everyone adores and turns into a vicious moral harridan... more

Lew Wallace, General in the Civil War, a man Billy the Kid wanted to kill, wrote a favorite 19th-century novel, made into a 20th-century movie: Ben-Hur... more

"Earth is the cradle of mankind, but one does not stay in the cradle forever." Space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovskii had a vision... more

The Mumbai attacks: sixty harrowing hours. Jason Motlagh's minute-by-minute account shows us scenes of great heroism and horrifying cruelty... more

Should historic art be repatriated to its land of origin? Imagine the Renaissance without the spell of "looted" antiquities from Greece... more

Friedrich Nietzsche cultivated the alien form of Dionysus on the soil of his native Pietism. In truth, he never overcame his childhood religion... more

Louis Armstrong, even as a little boy, "could easily see the ungodly treatment White Folks were handing the poor Jewish family I worked for"... more