Public opinion about climate change, observes the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin, can be compared to “waves in a shallow pan,” easily tipped with “a lot of sloshing but not […]
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I spend a lot of time hunting for cool stuff. Garage sales, estate sales, yard sales, antique stores, junk shops – you get the idea. I spend more time looking […]
There are still people here in Georgia who do not want their children to listen to a back-to-school speech from that bad, bad man, Mr. Barack Obama, otherwise known for […]
Welcome to the club. Let’s begin with the name, which is swiped from the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, a philosophy discussion group founded in 1878 for Cambridge men who were doing […]
Entrepreneur and virtuoso exam-taker Shawn O’Connor explains how to unleash your brain’s inner genius and conquer any test.
Like a biblical parable, the typical human-behavior experiment is easily told and easily reduced to a message: People who pay with credit cards were more likely to have potato chips […]
When you hear the name Samuel F. B. Morse you most likely think about Morse code or the telegraph. In reality, Morse only co-invented the code that bears his name […]
In her introductory video for “Pottermore,” the recently unveiled web portal for all things Potter, J. K. Rowling promises an enhanced multimedia experience for “the digital generation.” She also announces […]
–Guest post by Jan Lauren Boyles, American University doctoral student. “The motion passes, 5-4.” With that statement earlier this year, members of the University of Colorado Board of Regents voted to close its […]
Don’t just kill that guy, says Paul Rubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Kill him a lot.“ It’s a funny line (a great line, really) because it plays with the […]
Carlo Maria Broschi, better known as Farinelli, was one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time, and the 18th century equivalent of a rock star (“One God and […]
And not just a map: also a timeline, a literary checklist and a historiography
Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of buzz in the volcano world (at least in the internet) after some seismicity under El Hierro, one of the […]
This semester, 22 undergraduate and graduate students from a diversity of majors at American University have participated in a new course that I created titled “Science, Environment and the Media.” […]
Among the many deplorable effects of reading this blog, according to old-school journalists, is that you can’t count on what The New York Times (here, scroll down to section B5) […]
Innovative product design is increasingly crucial as the generally educated and wealthier boomer consumer rises to the fore of the marketplace with a lifetime of technology experience and rising expectations […]
Discussions of China tend to focus on size – a nation of over 1.3 billion people certainly deserves attention from business and investors worldwide. But, ‘total’ numbers reveal little about […]
This semester I am teaching an interdisciplinary course on “Science, the Environment, and the Media.” The 25 combined undergraduate and graduate students in the course have split into project teams […]
Watch Dr. Jacob Lowenstern take about Yellowstone Caldera! It is just like ‘Supervolcano’ but without the destruction.
It is that time a year again – final exams, Christmas music and the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. All this does make the end of the […]
Obesity is a growing global health problem, and we all know why, don’t we? It’s the fault of corporations that sell corn syrup, and a starkly unequal society (why would […]
When The New Yorker Probes the “Decline Effect,” An Opportunity Emerges to Rethink Science Education
At the New Yorker last week, science journalist Jonah Lehrer penned a conversation-starting feature on the so-called “decline effect,” the tendency across scientific fields for a new and exciting finding […]
If you say “it’s snowing hard out there,” are you annoyed if no one gets up to shovel the walkway?
Framing is a concept and term that is applied liberally in discussion of climate change politics and communication strategy. Unfortunately, despite widespread use, the concept is frequently misunderstood and misapplied. […]
Here at Waq al-waq I like to point out how important it is to know Arabic, partly because I have spent so long studying the language but also because if […]
After months of delays and preparation, the oldest remaining shuttlein the fleet–Discovery, finally made its way from the Vehicle Assembly Building at the KSC to the launch pad. At 4:53 […]
A cognitive scientist friend of mine made a good point the other day about Amy Chua’s assertion that “nothing is fun until you’re good at it.” It is, he said […]
In Big Think’s series “How to Write Great Fiction,” 12 celebrated authors give writing tips. Now see how well you know each writer’s work and style.
Here it is, the answers to your volcanic questions for Dr. Clive Oppenheimer. His new book, Eruptions that Shook the World, comes out this week and I’ll have a review […]
. Dell Books, the American series of pulp fiction books, spanned many genres, featured most of all the ‘classic’ detective story. Prominently featured were the maps on the back cover, […]