Human Ecology as an Alternative Framework Human ecology is an interdisciplinary field that examines the relationships among people, their families, communities, institutions, economies, and environments. Taught in various forms at universities and explored across fields ranging from ecology and sociology to design, nutrition, family studies, and public health, it asks how human
October 6, 2026
An Education in Complying with Social Norms From childhood, we are subjected to standards of how we should dress, eat, and conduct ourselves, and are rewarded for conformity and bullied for non-normative features. Children are easily influenced, both at home and in school. They are exposed to implicit bias and social categorization
October 5, 2026
How we view the world and each other is often influenced by learned patterns ingrained in the social hierarchies we are forced to conform to from an early age at home and in school. In most societies, beliefs about appearance, gender, and color influence behavior and judgment in every aspect of our
October 3, 2026
Beauchamp and Childress’ principlist framework has shaped biomedical ethics for more than four decades, providing clinicians and policymakers with a vocabulary centered on autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Its influence is undeniable: the four principles have become the default language of ethics committees, medical school curricula, and institutional policy. Yet principlism’s strength
September 21, 2026
The constitutional dispute is ultimately about whether a fixed Senate denominator can cause a two-thirds requirement to operate as a substantially higher threshold By Francis Allan L Angelo and Joseph Ledesma Ladrido The impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte has raised a constitutional question that appears to require little more than arithmetic. Article XI,
September 14, 2026
After 21 completed trial days, our outlook on the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte has moved clearly on the merits but only slightly on the probability of actual conviction. The evidence now supports a stronger case for removal than it did when the trial opened,
September 7, 2026
For more than a century, the submarine cables carrying the world’s communications largely followed the same paths as ships. The first transoceanic telegraph lines hugged colonial trade routes and their fibre-optic successors did much the same. Sea lines of communication were mirrored, almost
August 25, 2026
Emily Wilson begins her celebrated translation of Homer’s Odyssey with an imperative that has become almost as famous as the poem itself: “Tell me about a complicated man.” Christopher Nolan has acknowledged the importance of that formulation to his own adaptation of Homer. Yet in her fierce review of Nolan’s film,
August 20, 2026
(Last of two parts) The size of fonts also matters. Researchers Mareike Bayer, Werner Sommer, and Annekathrin Schacht measured cortical responses to words presented in large and small font sizes. The selected words were categorized as emotional or neutral, and the study found that emotional words in larger font sizes elicited earlier
August 6, 2026
(First of two parts) The oldest known engravings consist of zigzag patterns and parallel lines, carved into freshwater mussel shells at Trinil on the island of Java, Indonesia. These grooves, made by Homo erectus, date to roughly half a million years ago. By around 100,000 years ago, early Homo sapiens at Blombos
August 4, 2026
As democracies around the world face mounting challenges and pressures, discussions about autocracy often focus on personalities and ideologies or tend to link governance practices to differences among specific cultural traditions. Yet a growing body of comparative historical research has provided evidence that a more fundamental question deserves attention: How was
August 3, 2026
Story, a spoken or written account of connected events, is one of the main ways we communicate with other people. Whether it’s reading a picture book with a child, watching a movie, listening to a podcast, gossiping over a cup of coffee, or daydreaming about a vacation, we participate in storytelling in
July 21, 2026