Search Results

For the first time in its 217-year history, the Louvre, perhaps the greatest museum in the world, is asking the French public for financial help to purchase a painting. Even […]

Rising jazz pianist Vijay Iyer, whose doctoral thesis was a study of musical cognition and the movement of the body, draws inspiration from past jazz masters as well as the field of physics.

Christine Quinn hates it when people say “it is what is.” As a kid she read every biography in her school library about a political leader or famous woman. “The […]

When you talk about Classical music, you often begin with the three Killer B’s: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. If you talk about American photography, you need to begin with the […]

“As far as scientists can tell, we humans seem to be the only species that shed tears for emotional reasons.” Is there an evolutionary advantage to being inspired to weep?

The Feast Conference is a social innovation summit gathering some of the world’s most compelling thinkers and doers from a cross-disciplinary spectrum of innovation, inspiration and empowerment. Last year, The […]

In 1889, three-hundred Parisian workers completed assembling 18,000 pieces of iron that comprise the Eiffel Tower.  The structure, intended to only stand 20 years, was initially received with great criticism, […]

There is a popular narrative in the West that Islam is sexist. But aside from fundamentalist practices like honor killings, does moderate Islam actually deny women freedoms?

“Walking up the side of buildings like Spiderman could soon be a reality, scientists have claimed.” But the new technology was inspired by the gecko rather than the spider.

When you smell a ripe strawberry or your morning coffee, what you’re really smelling are hundreds of molecules, says fine fragrance perfumer Chistophe Laudamiel. But that doesn’t mean the brain […]

One of the bad things about having a smart phone is, I can now scroll through the headlines of the New York Times before I get out of bed.  This […]

Back in the spring, the Nisbet/Mooney tour visited the New York Academy of Sciences (Audio and Slides). In terms of turn out and post-discussion, it was one of the best […]

One frequent question I get is whether we can break the light barrier—because unless we can break the light barrier, the distant stars will always be unreachable.

It is not because Julian Assange reminds us of Errol Morris. It is because Julian Assange reminds us of Robert S. McNamara. His precision and self-assurance are coupled with mission, […]

On November 7th, Pope Benedict XVIconsecratedAntoni Gaudí’s weirdly wonderful masterpiece of religious architecture, the Sagrada Família (shown above). The Catholic Church tends to distrust anything modern these days, so seeing it […]

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 […]

In the final guest post on Colorado’s defeated Amendment 62, a “personhood” initiative that would have given full legal rights to fertilized human eggs, Trina Stout examines the effect of […]

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

The sub-title to this piece is “Patient-Advocates as Harbringers of Hope in the Health Care System.” n Disclaimer: I am a Libertarian-Progressive. I generally trust markets more than I trust […]

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are a fantastic energy-efficient alternative to standard incandescent ones, but let’s face it – they’re rather unfortunate-looking. Until now. From British human-centric gadget company Hulger and designer […]

I can’t say enough good things about Deborah Blum’s “The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.” It’s an fast-paced narrative that mixes […]

“Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory—inspired by pencil lead—that could make it all very simple.” The New Scientist reports.

There are seismic events which have such import, that it is possible to remember exactly where one was and what one was doing when the news first broke. I was […]

One of the most wonderful things about the emerging global superbrain is that information is overflowing on a scale beyond what we can wrap our heads around.

Dear Reader,  I apologize for the length of this article. It’s actually two articles smashed into one.  All together this post will take roughly 5 minutes to read.  I generally […]

Tod Machover, who has been called America’s most wired composer, is poised to transform your theater experience forever. His new opera “Death and the Powers,” will be unveiled on September […]

I’m blogging from Chicago’s O’Hare airport, on my way to Portland to participate in a unique summit bringing together philosophers, scientists, social scientists, poets, filmmakers, and artists to consider new […]

Most people do not come to Hollywood for deep conversation, but as we explained with respect to “serious games,” the entertainment universe is producing an impressive array of products that can […]

When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology […]

Jayne Merkel, architectural historian and critic, locates the moment in American architectural history when less ceased to be more and inspiration was found in yesterday’s buildings.