Showing posts with the label ScienceShow all
What does IQ really measure?
That's the subject of my latest online story for ScienceNOW. Please click the link to read, but here is the first paragraph: Kids who scor…
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Language May Have Helped Early Humans Spread Out of Africa
Here is my latest contribution to science journalism. Click the link to read the whole thing, but here as usual is the first paragraph to get you st…
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Early Birds Smelled Good
I've been very busy lately between trips to South Africa, Nantes, and now Toulouse for a prehistory meeting--so little time to do political comme…
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I shall sup from your skull
Some people, such as the Aghori sect of India, still do this today. As I report today on Science 's online news service, the practice of making …
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The Goddess and the Bull: Kindle edition
For those very few of you out there who have not yet read my book about Neolithic Catalhoyuk and the dawn of civilization, the Kindle edition is now…
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Balter speaks!
If you are in the vicinity of Brunswick, Maine on Monday, I will be speaking at Bowdoin College on the topic of "What Made Humans Modern: The Or…
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The Holy Land
National Geographic has just published a special issue on The Holy Land, with a lead off essay by yours truly, entitled "In the Beginning.&qu…
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Claude Lévi-Strauss est Mort
A great man is gone. R.I.P. More about him . From my Science colleague Constance Holden.
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Too much money for "glamorous" diseases?
I hope that Mickey Chopra, chief of health at Unicef, is being misquoted in the following lead of a story in the International Herald Tribune today…
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Does Grandma play favorites?
On Science 's online news service, ScienceNOW, I report on a very interesting paper from Leslie Knapp of the University of Cambridge and her col…
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Primatologists Go Ape Over "Ardi"
Today on Science 's Origins blog, I report on the first public debate over the significance of Ardipithecus ramidus , the candidate human ancest…
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Louis Leakey speaks at UCLA
Okay, I have a confession to make: Despite more than a decade covering human evolution for Science and other publications, it has taken me until thi…
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When Darwin met a Neandertal
As many readers will know if they have been paying attention during this 150th anniversary of its publication, On the Origin of Species makes no men…
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Does "Creation" lack the spark of genius?
That's the conclusion my colleague John Travis, European Editor of Science , comes to about this otherwise laudable attempt to portray the human …
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Ancient DNA: 25 years of agony and ecstasy
It has been 25 years since a team led by Allan Wilson extracted mitochondrial DNA from a museum specimen of the now-extinct quagga. On Science 's…
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Clothes Make the (Hu)Man
In this week's issue of Science I report on a possible sighting of the oldest known woven fibers, from a cave in the Republic of Georgia (see p…
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Ancient DNA Says Europe's First Farmers Came From Afar
In this week's issue of Science , I write about an ancient DNA study ( also published in the journal) which concludes that farming was brought …
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Drawing a Bead on Ancient Symbolic Behavior
Why was there such a long gap between when humans started looking anatomically modern--as early as 200,000 years ago--and when they started acting be…
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Lies about National Health Service rile Brits
I've just returned from two weeks in England, and I can report that the British press is full of stories about the amazing lies being told in the…
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My book about Neolithic Catalhoyuk in Turkey and the origins of civilization, the paperback edition. For more information about it, please visit MY WEB SITE
- Michael Balter
- I have been a working journalist for more than 40 years, beginning in Los Angeles as an investigative reporter and then in Paris as a travel, food, and science writer. For more than 20 years I have covered anthropology and archaeology writer for Science, Audubon, Scientific American, SAPIENS, and other publications. I have also covered sexual misconduct for The Verge, Scientific American, and others; I write about mental health, especially schizophrenia; and I engage in occasional media criticism. I returned to the USA in October 2017 after 30 years in Paris, and now live in the New York City area, where I currently teach journalism at City College of New York (I previously taught journalism at Boston University and New York University.) For more about me and what I do, copies of my articles, information about my book, and other goodies, please visit MY WEB SITE
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