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University of Minnesota researchers have built a toy-sized aircraft that moves in response to wireless signals interpreted by an EEG cap.

So you might think I’m excessively anti-technological.  That’s not true at all.  I do think that liberal education should be a counterweight to all our technological obsessions.  That means its […]

We are in need of tools to help us truly examine our own attitudes. 

To buy Stephen King’s latest novel, Joyland, you’ll have to go to an actual bookstore in an actual place. He’s not e-publishing it. I got my first Kindle 18 months […]

“Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed/ The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,” William Shakespeare writes in his Sonnet 27. “But then begins a journey in […]

A little bit of game theory suggests how Edward Snowden’s odyssey might end.

Two weeks ago, after turning onto Route 10 from Santa Monica, a truck sped by in the center lane. A hand truck flew from the back as it hit a […]

Researchers have launched a project that will figure out how to get the sensors we carry (or will carry) on our bodies to talk to each other, creating “cooperative interpersonal networks” that relay a wide range of data.

More employers and employees are looking into using their own personal devices for work instead of a company computer. Writer Brian Proffitt looks at the benefits and challenges for both groups.

While this is one violent storm, scientists were actually the most surprised by how much the hurricane seems to resemble one on Earth.

The world just lost a brilliant and fearless journalist. Michael Hastings did more in his short life than most people do in an entire lifetime. As information continues to come […]

Too many patients who are dying of natural causes receive dramatic surgeries near the end of their lives, only serving to sustain their pain and suffering while seldom adding time to their lives. 

Wireless companies are offering their customers’ location data to companies that plan to use it for purposes ranging from city planning to market research.

My fear is that there’s a lot of pressure on public corporations no matter how well intentioned their managers are to produce results.

This is becoming the central paradox of the Information Age: the easier it is for humans to create content and information on their digital devices, the more likely it is […]

Feedback is important to every large organization, and complaints are one of the ways that big companies get feedback from their customers. 

My points are modest in what they are trying to prove, or they would be if many people weren’t entirely immodest in what they refuse to discuss.

Is a life lived without asking why a more impoverished life?  There’s the question.

Witnessing, as we all did, the events of Boston made me turn to the news. This was a mistake. Turning to social media was even worse. A mismanagement of information, […]

This according to a Carnegie Mellon University study, which is one of the first to document the evolution of information sharing over an extended time period.

     Ideology often drives people to madness. History is full of frightening examples. The most recent may be California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a member of the House Science Committee, which […]

Who elected young college graduates the kings and queens of language?

Minneapolis-based Miinome is still getting off the ground, but once it does it could become the world’s first “member-controlled human genetic marketplace.”

“The accuracy of our memories is not measured in how vivid they are nor how certain you are that they’re correct.”

Mary Roach takes us on a tour through the alimentary canal to explain our biology from the perspective of bacteria. 

As with the anecdotally rich discoveries in Freakonomics, practitioners of predictive analytics constantly stumble upon insightful gems such as,vegetarians miss fewer flights.

How many forms does it take to put a kid on a bus to summer camp? I’m a fan of civil juries as informal vehicles for wealth redistribution and justice, […]

The poet Christian Wiman has written a careful, probing, and spiritual account of his rare, incurable and unpredictable cancer. His point of view is that of the modern day believer.

Because such a wealth of personal information on nearly everyone is now available online, a person’s anonymous genetic information is enough to identify an individual’s full name.

Swiss novelist Rolf Dobelli has been making waves with a new work of nonfiction called The Art of Thinking Clearly in which he criticizes the news media for poisoning our brains with ever more novelty.