Christopher Hitchens, Demystifier Extraordinaire.
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David Brooks’s recent love letter to Christopher Hitchens called (respectfully) only glancing attention to the celebrated author’s current battle with cancer; instead, Brooks focused on how important Hitchens is to […]
To what degree are you allowed the privacy to grieve the loss of a family member? Christos Catsouras found out in October 2006. His 18-year-old daughter, Nikki, died after slamming […]
The McFarthest place is somewhere in South Dakota
The role of the Devil’s advocate was to argue against the beatification of mystics. Contrary to popular belief, they did not wear Prada.
The ten greatest ideas in science form the bedrock of modern biology, chemistry, and physics. Everyone should be familiar with them.
All the latest titles from the experts at MIT.
From psychology to neuroscience, what we believe is not nearly as relevant as why we do.
Who are the new black atheists and what is behind their recent growth?
Trying to figure out the meaning of life? Here are a few thoughts on the subject from some very famous American philosophers.
The U.S. State Department’s “Countries of Concern" include North Korea, Myanmar, and more. But how close is America itself to earning a place on the list?
A handful of noble families own large tracts of the British capital - and have done so for centuries
What secrets did Shakespeare take to his grave 400 years ago? Are the plays the thing to unlock the mysteries of literature’s king?
Charles Darwin probably wouldn't like what his name now means. He called any "Darwinian" human, having no trace of team loyalty, "an unnatural monster."
Technomorphic ideas can alter the rules of our thinking about our thinking — and also show that simple rules can escape physics-like predictability.
When William Shakespeare’s friends and fellow actors and authors published his collected plays in 1623, 7 years after the Bard shuffled off this mortal coil, that book, now known as […]
The computer scientists and ranking enthusiasts Steven Skiena and Charles Ward used Google's Page-Rank algorithm to determine the most significant people of all time.
When people use plastic to pay for food, they make more impulse-based purchases, like ice cream, donuts and chips, compared to those who pay with cash, as I wrote here […]
For the third year running, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” list of […]
Revealed today at the Frankfurt Book Fair: The Beagle, a small, AAA-battery-driven device that is expected to sell for less than $13 when offered through mobile carriers.
The horrifying midnight movie shooting spree in Colorado on Friday has re-ignited the national debate over gun control that raged following the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres in 1999 and […]
Last week the House voted 218-208 to block the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. No other type of research would be blocked by the NSF budget amendment. […]
Richard Dawkins, the most famous "atheist" on the planet, has argued "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other."
The question of my last post: Why do we deny that it’s our nature to die? The answer from many of my threaders: We aren’t merely or even essentially natural […]
Continuing a tradition I started last year, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” […]
How many times will Bob Dylan be accused of plagiarism of one kind or another? The latest accusations blowing in the wind involve not Dylan’s style or songs, but rather […]
Take two strapping young men. Give one of them a job as a lifeguard from May until September. For the same period, pay the other one to “farm gold” in […]
James Wood is probably the best literary critic working today. If he wrote a review of the phone book, I would read it. This week, though, I find myself disagreeing […]