‘Smart Idiots’ and ‘Rich Idiots’: Climate Change Denial Increases With Income Among Republicans

A new study shows that as Republicans’ income rises, they are more likely to dismiss the damaging effects of global warming; some people believe the Israeli government is feeding everyone “lies upon lies” to justify its attack on Gaza; meanwhile, an elephant was photographed crying as he was released from 50 years of captivity. These discoveries and more below.

Chimpanzee Brain Power Is Strongly Heritable If a chimpanzee appears unusually intelligent, it probably had bright parents. That’s the message from the first study to check if chimp brain power is heritable.

Data Science: What the Facebook Controversy is Really About The Facebook contagion study raises a lot of questions. But what does it mean for this thing we call data science?

21st Century Literacy: New Initiative Makes the Case that Learning to Code is for Everyone Many people view computer programming as a narrow, technical activity appropriate for only a small segment of the population.

The World’s Biggest Cities Will Be in Asia and Africa by 2030 New York, Osaka, and Sao Paulo won’t even make the top 10.

How to Bring Back the Nigerian Schoolgirls, Three Months On On Monday, it will be exactly three months since Boko Haram kidnapped over two hundred schoolgirls from the town of Chibok, in Nigeria.

Meet the ‘Rich Idiot’ Effect: Rich Republicans Are the Worst Climate Deniers We’ve known for some time that as Republicans become more highly educated, or better at general science comprehension, they become stronger in their global warming denial.

Israel Attack On Gaza Founded On Lies Upon Lies In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”

Fukushima Ice Plan Failing to Take Hold Japan’s nuclear regulators call for operator of crippled plant to find solution to thousands of tons of radioactive water.

At Sea in a Deluge of Data This spring, more college students than ever received baccalaureate degrees, and their career prospects are brighter than they were for last year’s graduates.

Facebook Has All the Power Media critic Jay Rosen says a controversial mood study shows how few rights and how little control Facebook users actually have.

Hope for Frogs in Face of a Deadly Fungus In the 1990s, a disturbing silence began to settle across the world. From mountain lakes to tropical streams, the music of singing frogs began to disappear.

9 Feminist Arguments Against Using Trigger Warnings in Academia This is truly “the year of the trigger warning,” as Slate foretold.

The Week’s Best ‘Rescue of Elephant After 50 Years of Abuse’ Story Incredible sight of the elephant that cried: Raju was held in chains, beaten and abused for fifty years and on the day he was released tears rolled down his face.