Submission statement: Adam Mastroianni examines why scientific discovery seemingly avoided low-hanging fruit for so long.
For example, why did the Ancient Egyptians know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid 4,000 years ago, but medieval European thought that meat transformed into maggots until 1668? Why were ancient people able to make significant mathematical discoveries, while still demonstrating ignorance about basic real-life processes?
Submission statement:
Erik Hoel argues that 2012 was a cultural inflection point. Just as 1968 signalled the peak of the 1960s cultural revolution that would set the stage for the next few decades of social change, 2012 represents the beginning of the (spoiler) smartphone era and a new round of social change.
Submission statement: Eternally interesting blogger Matt Lakeman goes on a (very) deep dive into K-pop. He covers the history of Korean pop music, obsessive fans, gruelling popstar cram schools and the corporate machine behind it all.
Submission statement: Anthropologist William Buckner discusses the social purposes and methods of duelling in various societies.
Submission statement: Misha Saul writes about how fathers love their daughters. With examples from the Sopranos, Disney movies and the Talmud.
I suppose some part of the love of daughters must be wrapped up in the feminine. That is, after all, the defining line between daughters and sons.
The love of daughters may be the purest form of love of woman possible: desexualised, a man can appreciate the feminine in all its splendour, unmarred by lust. Gentle. Soft. Loving. Fiery.
A father’s love of his daughter mirrors a boy’s love of his mother. But the love of his mother is the water a boy swims in — as a forever-presence, it’s sometimes harder to appreciate. But a daughter is a new thing that arrives in the flush of adulthood.
Daughters bring out what is best in a man: he provides where she needs him, he protects where she is vulnerable, he dotes where she is playful.
A daughter is the confluence of everything a man needs in life: relevance and love. What greater need is there than to provide and protect your baby girl? And she is the first woman after his mother to love him unconditionally from the get go. But well before the feeling of being loved melts him — when she is two or three or four and tells him she loves him and kisses him — he discovers another feeling of love. The pleasure in loving. The simple pleasure in being near her, silly with her, holding her. Your wife may be the love of your life but that love is bound up with the banalities and duties of marriage and the strictures of covenant. A daughter is a strange, angelic extension of you. A beating heart outside your chest.