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Big ideas in the news from around the web
"Progress may, for a time, intersect with one's own personal ideology, and during that period one will become a gung-ho technological progressivist. But that's just coincidence," writes Nicholas Carr. "In the end, progress doesn't care about ideology. Those who think of themselves as great fans of ...
It can be shocking to hear stories about female terrorists like the Russian "black widows" and America's "Jihad Jane" -- particularly because women so rarely turn to violence. "We often turn our backs to the possibility that women could commit such hideous acts of violence," says Northeastern ...
"Otto Dix is a difficult artist to like," writes Judith Dobrzynski. "But admiration is a different thing altogether, and -- hard as it is to view some of his images, especially those portraying sexual murders -- Dix ranks among the greatest of 20th-century German artists." Dobrzynski discusses Dix's ...
Robert Wright believes Tiger Woods' sexual behavior represents a threat to the moral sanction that is vital to the institution of monogamous marriage. He writes that "the institution that seems to be, on average, the least bad means of rearing children is an institution that doesn’t naturally ...
A team of Russian and American scientists reported yesterday that they had discovered a new -- and very heavy -- atomic element. Six atoms of the element were created in a lab by smashing together isotopes of calcium and the radioactive element berkelium in a particle accelerator. The discovery ...
Kevin Kelly went to China to find out how local film industries survive in places where everything seems to be pirated. But as he studied China (and India, and Nigeria), he discovered that piracy of local films was not as rampant as that of imported Hollywood fare. "Contrary to expectations and ...
Some of the most arch realists and high-ranking Cold warriors in the US foreign-policy establishment are supporting the idea of a nuclear-free world. Having realized the dangers that have grown in the world since the end of the U.S.'s nuclear-tipped standoff with Russia, many think that we would be ...
Researchers have found three species that apparently spend their entire lives in the oxygen-starved waters at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Previously, living oxygen-free was thought to only be possible for viruses and single-celled microorganisms, but these three as-yet-unnamed bottom ...
Sarah Palin's speeches are given to "meandering phraseology of a kind suggesting someone more commenting on impressions as they enter and leave her head rather than constructing insights about them," writes John McWhorter. He doesn't think that Palin's way of speaking is attractive to her fans, per ...
Faced with climate change, some birds are changing their migration schedules and staying closer to home -- and in the future they might stop migrating altogether. Researchers have found that some birds are shortening their migrations, putting more energy toward breeding and eating instead of flying ...
For decades, the World Health Organization has been saying that eating more fruits and vegetables will help reduce the incidence of cancer -- but it appears those dietary additions do little. Evidence from multiple studies indicates that the protective effects of these foods against cancer are ...
Physicists have developed the smallest electrically pumped laser ever, with a beam that is 30 micrometers long, eight micrometers high, and has a wavelength of 200 micrometers. It is the first time that a laser has been created that is smaller than the wavelength its light emits. Scientists think ...
Scientists in the Philippines say they have discovered a new species of giant lizards with bright yellow, blue, and green skin, that lives in the forests and survives on a fruit-only diet. The lizard is actually well-known to rural tribes, which regularly hunt them for meat -- but until now ...
Cities could reduce their pollen count by planting street trees that produce very little of it, writes Thomas Leo Ogran, author of the book Allergy-Free Gardening. American cities weren't always hotbeds of springtime sneezing. Rather, he writes, they became much more allergenic in the 60s and 70s ...
New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences suggests that a gigantic network of offshore wind power stations along the Eastern seaboard could potentially provide energy to a large swath of the U.S. without much threat of outages. The concept, outlined by marine ...