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A world free of disease and poverty. A dictatorial and all-powerful artificial intelligence. Picnics on sunny days with one’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. Genetically engineered dangerous mutants. Which one of […]
I still remember seeing the Tribute in Light from the New Jersey side of the Hudson. From a distance, the twin beams of light standing where the World Trade Center […]
Yesterday, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Judge Virginia Phillips declared the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy unconstitutional. In her ruling—which comes on the heels of […]
Why exactly do fights break out when people are drinking? You might think it’s simple biochemistry—alcohol molecules wreaking changes on brain cells, leading to behavior change, leading to a broken […]
Blogger David Xia friend swiped this card from Citibank while he was there for an interview. It’s a list of tips for women on how not to sabotage their careers […]
Stephen Hawking’s latest book Grand Design sits atop the Amazon best-seller list and has been the subject of gobal news attention and debate. Driving discussion (and sales) is Hawking’s “no […]
Some factions within the natural childbirth movement are attempting to popularize the concept of “birth rape.” The idea is that women who are handled roughly, verbally abused, or bullied into […]
Two small asteroids that were discovered on September 5th by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., whizzed past the Earth on Wednesday. According to scientists, the first asteroid (2010 […]
Well, it has been a long week and my brain is pretty close to liquified after teaching and submitting my paper, so let’s end the week with the first Mystery […]
In the midst of the circus surrounding Pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn Qurans on the anniversary of September 11th, perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the emerging meme among […]
It is technically illegal for the government to torture prisoners. Almost no one would deny that. Section 2340 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime punishable by up […]
In Greek mythology, the gods sometimes punished man by fulfilling his wishes too completely. This is the first line of Henry Kissinger’s 1957 Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. Always controversial, […]
After a busy day where I finally send off my paper on zircon and the magmatic evolution of the Okataina Caldera Complex… A new Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic […]
Former CBS news correspondent Jere Van Dyk talks about the survival skills he used to get through a 45-day kidnapping ordeal in Afghanistan where his life was threatened daily.
Two volcanoes are keeping our attention right now: Sinabung, Indonesia Halfway around the world, activity at Sinabung continues to be cause for increasing concern. The volcano is experiencing larger and […]
In a panel discussion last night following Feisel Abdul Rauf’s appearance on CNN Larry King Live, host Anderson Cooper and new primetime personalities Kathleen Parker and Eliot Spitzer framed Rauf’s […]
Feisel Abdul Rauf returned to the United States last weekend and yesterday began the urgent process of telling his side of the story. As I wrote previously, power in politics […]
“Study shows that fatter men last longer in bed. Should Americans rejoice?” Slate covers Turkish research concluding that the less masculine a man’s body, the better lover he is.
I found myself in a movie theater this weekend, cooling my heels along with the rest of my tribe as we watched the movie Takers. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be writing […]
“Hey, Kiddo.” When she was a young girl, Berkeley Reinhold would pick up the phone and hear Andy Warhol greet her with those words. Although he was calling for her […]
President Obama doesn’t get enough credit. As fellow Big Thinker Kris Broughton wrote in a recent post, it’s ridiculous to say that Obama hasn’t accomplished much while in office, whatever […]
So let’s now speak about the future. You may have heard about the asteroid Apophis, which is about the size of the Rose Bowl Stadium. It’s said that the large […]
How about this for some real corporate mumbo jumbo? BP’s own internal report into the Deepwater Horizon disaster mixes the technical with the pseudo diplomatic. But there is no doubt […]
Like any sensible person, I worry about the imminent arrival of Skynet and the Cylons, in the form of artificial intelligences that could be physically, intellectually and perhaps, as J. […]
A recent study by members of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has been getting a lot of attention – one where it was suggested that we are very close to the […]
The most interesting and important things about science often go uncovered in the news media. Journalists and editors–especially in today’s world of cutbacks–have always tended to define what’s newsworthy in […]
“Can the Ten Commandments be understood apart from religion?” William Galston reviews a new book which argues the Ten Commandments are not religious in nature.
“The magic income: $75,000 a year. As people earn more money, their day-to-day happiness rises. Until you hit $75,000. After that, it is just more stuff, with no gain in happiness.”
“The pastor who plans to burn Korans is despicable. But the rush to condemn this maniac clouds legitimate free-speech debate.” Tunku Varadarajan on when rights should be abridged.
How can space impact and improve the happiness of a community?