After eight years, few lines from Barack Obama’s Presidential speeches stay in mind. For all his literary and oratorical gifts, he didn’t coin the kinds of phrases that stick with repetition, as if his distaste for politics generally—the schmoozing, the fakery—extended to the fashioning of slogans. He rarely turned to figurative language, and he never stooped to “Read my lips,” or even “Ask not what your country can do for you.” His most memorable phrase, “Yes we can,” spoke to the audacious odds of his own run for the Presidency, not a clear political vision. He sought to persuade by explaining and reasoning, not by simplifying or dramatizing—a form of respect that the citizenry didn’t always deserve.

This aversion to rhetoric, like Obama’s aloofness from Congress, is a personal virtue that hurt him politically. It’s connected to his difficulty in sustaining public support for his program and his party. Even the President’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, was a master of the poetic sound bite.

This is the last week of the Obama Presidency. Historians will argue over its meaning and its merits. But, for democratic integrity, there’s no argument, no contest. Obama’s final speech wasn’t just a warning—it will stand as an emblem of what we have been and perhaps can be. 

To understand Obama's legacy, walk in his shoes on the day it all began

WASHINGTON — We try to assess Barack Obama’s legacy by squinting into the murky future — debating the durability of his policies and programs, wondering what the new president will do to them.

But when we measure the 44th president’s accomplishments, do we recall where and when he started? Remember what the nation and world were like the day he took office? Imagine what might have been without him?

A "stubborn' decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would involve "very serious consequences" and damage efforts for peace in the Middle East, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Sunday.

Hundreds of people rallied in support of Israel outside its embassy in Paris on Sunday."Wwe are here today to express our objection to the Paris Middle East conference, which we consider an anti-Israeli tribunal, similar to the negative decisions adopted by" the United Nations, Francis Kalifat, who heads a Jewish advocacy group in

These waves are classified by how frequently the neurons fire in a single second. If they fire one to four times, that’s a delta wave, which occurs during deep sleep. If they fire 12 to 30 times, that’s a beta wave, which is typical of normal wakefulness. And if they do so 30 to 90 times, that’s a gamma wave, which has been linked to higher mental abilities, like memory, attention, and perception. It’s no surprise, then, that scientists have seen disrupted gamma waves in many types of brain disorders, including injuries, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease

This is still preliminary work, but it heralds a completely new approach to dealing with Alzheimer’s—changing neural activity, rather than delivering drugs or chemicals. “It’s so different from what people have tried, but we are very excited about the possibility of bringing this to human testing,” says Li-Huei Tsai, an MIT researcher who led the study.

Hiram Maxim didn’t set out to invent a killing machine. But a lifetime of tinkering and building eventually led Maxim, who called himself a “chronic inventor,” to design and build the world’s first portable and fully automatic gun.

“It is the most dreadful instrument that I have ever seen or imagined.”

“This is indeed a very curious world. I was the first man in the world to make an automatic gun,” Maxim wrote. “It is astonishing to note how quickly this invention put me on the very pinnacle of fame. Had it been anything else but a killing machine, very little would have been said of it.

In 1690, English philosopher John Locke claimed that “brutes abstract not.” By “brutes,” he meant our fellow animals. By “abstract,” he meant pulling out general concepts from specific examples. While humans might look at chalk, snow, and milk, and conceive of a property called whiteness, other animals would not. “The having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes,” Locke said. “They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them.”

“I think this has got the potential to revolutionize our field and will be discussed for years to come.”

Obama in Science: The Renewable Revolution Will Outlast Trump

For the past five years, solar and wind energy have exploded in popularity in the  United States. Since the election of Donald Trump, energy analysts have been trying to figure out if that trend will continue.

Some analysts argue that the trend is irreversible. The cost of solar and wind power are falling so fast that they will soon beat fossil fuels on price alone, regardless of what the federal government does. Since 2008, the price per watt of utility-scale solar energy has fallen by 64 percent. Even Walmart puts solar panels on its roofs now.

Can Babies Understand the World From Birth?

Over the past couple of decades, researchers like Saxe have used functional MRI to study brain activity in adults and children. But fMRI, like a 19th-century daguerreotype, requires subjects to lie perfectly still lest the image become hopelessly blurred. Babies are jittering bundles of motion when not asleep, and they can’t be cajoled or bribed into stillness. The few fMRI studies done on babies to date mostly focused on playing sounds to them while they slept.

But Saxe wanted to understand how babies see the world when they’re awake; she wanted to image Arthur’s brain as he looked at video clips, the kind of thing that adult research subjects do easily.

It was never clear whether Exxon’s leaders actually supported those policies or whether they were trying to put their best PR foot forward (or whether it mattered either way). But now Tillerson is the Secretary of State-designate for a man who not only rejects the Paris treaty, but who also once tweeted that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese. What does Tillerson really think about global warming—and will it matter?

it pointed to a potential shift in the Republican Party’s treatment of climate change. If some party members stop debating whether global warming is real (it is), and begin discussing what to do about it, the odd politics of the issue in the United States could begin to change.

Since presidents ultimately set all policy, it’s also unclear whether Tillerson’s opinions about climate diplomacy may matter. But as the leader of an American business, it makes sense that he would see American engagement in global affairs as worthwhile.

Winning the Race Against Time

Angela Jimenez’s new book, Racing Age, explores a level of athleticism that many may not know was possible: competitive masters track & field for those athletes aged sixty and over.

. "Because they defy visual stereotypes, these athletes surprise us," she said. "They are not weak, or vulnerable, or just cute: they are fierce and competitive. It is inspiring and brave,

Some rumors seem to emerge from nowhere; others are invented for a discernable reason.

Perhaps Trump made a sustained bid for the Presidency in 2016 because he sensed that the end of the age of mass media had created a historic opportunity.

But cable news was already big business in 1999, when Trump considered a third-party run. Twitter and Facebook did not exist in 1999. In 2011, their power was ascendant. Now Facebook is, by many measures, the biggest media company in the world. Did Trump play the media, using provocation to gain more attention than anyone thought possible? We are all the media now. He played all of us.