Oprah's Head, Ann-Margaret's Body: A Brief History of Pre-Photoshop Fakery
In 1989, TV Guide put television's celebrity-du-jour, Oprah Winfrey, on its cover, perching her upon a pile of money. The picture was exactly the kind of thing that tends to sell magazines on newsstands and in supermarket check-out lines: It was friendly, it was saucy, it was sparkly. The only problem was that it wasn't, actually, Oprah. TV Guide had taken a picture of the talk show host's face ..
Awakening
Since its introduction in 1846, anesthesia has allowed for medical miracles. Limbs can be removed, tumors examined, organs replaced—and a patient will feel and remember nothing. Or so we choose to believe. In reality, tens of thousands of patients each year in the United States alone wake up at some point during surgery. Since their eyes are taped shut and their bodies are usually paralyzed, they
Bacteria Survive in NASA’s Clean Rooms by Eating Cleaning Products
It seems that the harsh, dry, and chemically bombarded environments of the clean rooms select for only the toughest bacteria. And Acinetobacter strains are unusually tough as it is. They can resist hydrogen peroxide, desiccation, radiation, high pressures, and temperatures of up to 80 degrees Celsius. Some strains can shrug off antibiotics and cause outbreaks of pneumonia in hospitals, although Mo
‘Right to Try’ Sounds Much Better Than It Actually Is
The new law has a catchy name, but it will only make it more difficult to know if medication is effective or safe. President Trump poses for a photo with Jordan McLinn, who has muscular dystrophy, on May 30 in the Oval Office. (Evan Vucci / AP) In the Oval Office on Wednesday the president kissed a small boy with muscular dystrophy. Behind them were two men who Trump described as battling ALS. He
Climate Change Can Be Reversed by Turning Air Into Gasoline
A liquid fuel, synthesized from water and carbon dioxide by Carbon Engineering (Carbon Engineering) A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere. If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity th
Super-Black Is the New Black
Feathers on birds-of-paradise contain light-trapping nanotechnology that makes some of the deepest blacks in the world. Blackbirds, it turns out, aren’t actually all that black. Their feathers absorb most of the visible light that hits them, but still reflect between 3 and 5 percent of it. For really black plumage, you need to travel to Papua New Guinea and track down the birds-of-paradise. Althou
How to Impregnate a Rhino
When Parker Pennington first saw the embryo, she gasped—but very quietly. At the time, as is often the case for her these days, she had her arm fully inside the rectum of a white rhino, and she didn’t want to alarm the animal by yelping excitedly. In her immersed hand, she held an ultrasound probe, which revealed that the rhino, who goes by Victoria, had a tiny marble in her uterus. She was pregna
The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
1. The Aristocracy Is Dead …For about a week every year in my childhood, I was a member of one of America’s fading aristocracies. Sometimes around Christmas, more often on the Fourth of July, my family would take up residence at one of my grandparents’ country clubs in Chicago, Palm Beach, or Asheville, North Carolina. The breakfast buffets were magnificent, and Grandfather was a jovial host, alwa
Uber’s Self-Driving Car Didn’t Malfunction, It Was Just Bad
Other self-driving companies’ testing protocols involve two people: one to drive and the other to monitor the system’s outputs and do the computer work. Uber itself did this too until late 2017, when the company decided that the second operator’s job could be done by looking at logs back at the office. “We decided to make this transition because after testing, we felt we could accomplish the task
The Man Who Made Off With John Updike’s Trash
It should have been an ordinary bike ride. For 22 miles under the glare of late-May sunshine, 48-year-old Paul Moran pedaled his green bicycle past lobster traps and sailboats along the Massachusetts coast north of Boston. He liked taking the backroads from his Salem home to Singing Beach, a popular destination in an otherwise sleepy seaside town. When he approached Beverly Farms, where Easter egg
How a Salamander Pyramid Scheme Doomed the World’s Largest Amphibians
It turns out that the Chinese giant salamander is actually five different species—and they’re all probably facing extinction. The world’s largest amphibian should have been easy to find. While most salamanders are the size of your finger, Chinese giant salamanders can be as big as your entire body. Even average individuals can grow to Labrador size. Their heads are broad and flattened, their eyes
Trump’s Only Iran Strategy Is to Punish Iran
The administration doesn’t want a grand bargain with the Islamic Republic. They want a different government. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, center, and National-Security Adviser John Bolton, right, listen during a meeting with President Trump in the White House on May 17. (Andrew Harrer-Pool / Getty) After Donald Trump’s announcement last week that the United States was walking away from the Iran
Donald Trump Has All the Power
The president’s alarming Sunday tweet could genuinely produce a crisis between the White House, on the one hand, and the Justice Department and the FBI, on the other. Sunday afternoon, President Trump tweeted an extraordinary threat—extraordinary even by the standards of Donald Trump’s norm-busting use of Twitter and abusive conduct toward the Justice Department and federal investigations: “I here
Is Salt Bad? A Prison Study May Hold the Answer
Research on inmates is logistically difficult and ethically fraught. There is a lot to fight over in the vagaries of dietary science, but possibly nothing has been as contentious or as longstanding as the salt wars. For decades, public-health officials have pushed people to eat less salt, which is linked to lower blood pressure, which in turn is linked to less heart disease. And for the same decad
'13 Reasons Why' Tries Again
After being lambasted for its portrayal of teen suicide in Season 1, the Netflix series is back, and it’s taken the criticism to heart. Late in the second season of 13 Reasons Why, Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) has an altercation with his school principal, Mr. Bolan (Steven Weber). Bolan has imposed a new rule at Liberty High that anyone talking about the suicide of Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford
Hippos Poop So Much That Sometimes All the Fish Die
Their dung consumes the oxygen around it, creating lethal pulses of suffocating water. At first, Chris Dutton and Amanda Subalusky had no idea why the fish were dying. At a bridge on the border between Kenya and Tanzania, they noticed that whenever the Mara River rose by a few feet, dead fish would wash up on its banks, sometimes in the thousands. Storks, vultures, crocodiles, and hyenas made shor
The Jaguar Is Made for the Age of Humans
A writer comes face-to-face with the cat deep in the Amazon jungle and left with a new understanding of its surprising resilience to poaching and habitat loss. “There’s a jaguar in the baño,” George Olah told me with a small smile. “Um?” I managed, squinting into the dusky Amazon forest surrounding our camp. “She’s behind that tree. Look for spots,” Olah said. Then: “No. That tree,” pointing to a
All Work and No Play: Why Your Kids Are More Anxious, Depressed
For more than fifty years, children's free play time has been continually declining, and it's keeping them from turning into confident adults What are your memories of playing as a child? Some of us will remember hide and seek, house, tag, and red rover red rover. Others may recall arguing about rules in kickball or stick ball or taking turns at jump rope, or creating imaginary worlds with our dol
Why Do the Boy Scouts Want to Include Girls?
The organization’s decision overturns a historic and defining separation, raising questions about their timing and how they differ from the Girl Scouts of the USA. A Boy Scout wears an Eagle Scot neckerchief during the annual Boy Scouts Parade and Report to State in the House Chambers at the Texas State Capitol, on February 2, 2013, in Austin, Texas. (Eric Gay / AP) On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts of
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