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The human population has already grown too large and demanding for Earth to sustainably support at current consumption levels, a new study warns. Based on more than two centuries of population data, a team led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia found humanity is living well beyond the bounds of what our planet can support long-term. Ecologists describe the ability of an environment to sustain a species' population as its "carrying capacity". It's an estimate of the number of individuals from any given species that can survive long-term, based on the resources at hand and the rate at...

Long before Karen, there was Nanni. (Geni/Wikimedia Commons) ****************************************************************** Almost 4,000 years ago, a Mesopotamian man named Nanni was so disappointed with the copper he bought from a trader named Ea-nāṣir, that he decided to write a formal complaint. Today, this Bronze Age clay tablet is the oldest customer complaint we know of – and it's a doozy. Writing and trade have an inseparable history. Some of the oldest surviving examples of written language are stocktakes and ledgers recorded in the ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform script. Since copper is a key ingredient in the very bronze the age was named for,...