“Beit Noam-Ize” America’s Batterers?–Kit Gruelle

Article – Suzan Mazur

I’ve been thinking about domestic violence partly because of the film Private Violence recently shown at Sundance and other film festivals and now scheduled for an October run on HBO — featuring women’s advocate Kit Gruelle, among others, and with Gloria … Read more »

The Whereabouts of the Dorak Treasure Monograph

Article – Suzan Mazur

Arlette Mellaart has died, the beloved wife of the late British archaeologist James Mellaart — who gave us the fabulous story of the Dorak Treasure. Although I’ve seen no notice in the media about the passing of Mrs. Mellaart, her son Alan told me by … Read more »

Darling, Which of Us Is the Robot? — Slawek Nasuto

Article – Suzan Mazur

Cyberneticist Slawomir Jaroslaw Nasuto has a radiance that can only be Polish. He was born in eastern Poland, in Lublin, during the Soviet years (Stalin was embraced by the post-WWII provisional Polish government headquartered there) and is now doing … Read more »

Robots and the 1% — Vincent Müller Interview

Article – Suzan Mazur

Philosopher Vincent Mller has been to the mount. To the peak, of Mt. Olympus that is, many times, as a mountaineering enthusiast who now calls Greece home. These days Mller thinks a lot about how Artificial Intelligence will — pro and con — impact … Read more »

ICE “Incompetence” In Iranian Griffin Debacle

Article – Suzan Mazur

As the Iranian silver griffin debacle continues to be dissected, I have heard more from Peter Northover, head of the materials-based science/archaeology group at Oxford University, one of three authenticators on the griffin for New York art dealer Hicham … Read more »

A Fake? — “America’s Souvenir to the Iranian People”

Article – Suzan Mazur

The big thaw in US – Iran relations has been compromised. The world’s leading authority on antiquities fakes — long-time Metropolitan Museum of Art Ancient Near East expert Oscar White Muscarella, who excavated throughout the 1960s in Iran — has told me … Read more »

Piet Hut: Origins Of Life And Herding Cats

Article – Suzan Mazur

Institute for Advanced Study astrophysicist Piet Hut moves lithely, unassumingly, harmoniously through a crowd often in signature t-shirt (unlike Piethut, the asteroid named for him orbiting the sun with a semimajor axis of 2.4 AU, an eccentricity of … Read more »

Tokyo Origin of Life Talks: Core of Earth–Beyond

Article – Suzan Mazur

In January there was Princeton’s publicly streamed powwow on Origin of Life oriented to chemistry. Then February’s private meeting on the subject at CERN on the Swiss-French border, focused on physics and philosophy. Tokyo’s upcoming symposium, March 27-29, … Read more »

Origin Of Life Soufflé Rises

Article – Suzan Mazur

Covering a recent Origin of Life meeting at CERN on the outskirts of Geneva, I was surprised to learn that I’d been made a member of Atlas, the particle physics experiment at CERN. As such, I probably qualified for a room at the CERN hotel (dormitory), … Read more »

Steve Benner: Let’s Discuss Origin of Life on Charlie Rose

Article – Suzan Mazur

Steve Benner describes himself as a “crackpot synthetic biologist to some extent” (i.e., he thinks outside the box). Benner pioneered synthetic biology, for example, and in 1984, generated the first synthetic gene to encode an enzyme. Read more »