How Ballpoint Pens Killed Cursive

While many blame the downfall of handwriting on computers, tablets and smartphones, its decline actually began long ago—after a man named Marcel Bich released the first Bic Crystal ballpoint pen in 1946. Back then, fountain pens were the norm, and their inks were thin and bled at the first sign of applied pressure. But with the new ballpoint pens (and their thicker inks), connecting letters …

Risky Business: The Teenage Brain

“Nothing—whether it’s being with your friends, having sex, licking an ice cream cone, zipping along in a convertible on a warm summer evening, hearing your favorite music—will ever feel as good as it did when you were a teenager,” says Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University. From weak frontal lobes to enlarged nucleus accumbens and extra more dopamine receptors, adolescents’ brains are …

10 Years After Hurricane Katrina

Before the catastrophic Hurricane Katrina hit 10 years ago, New Orleans was a dramatically different city. There are now 100,000 fewer black residents living there and property prices are increasing, but new businesses are also popping up. While each area is recovering and changing in different ways, there is no doubt that the city was changed forever—not just because of the storm, but also because …