When children are born with severe, debilitating conditions like some forms of spina bifida—in which some vertebrae on top of the spinal cord remain unfused and open—their lives can often […]
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In provoking the emotions of fear and anger among non-believers, the Dawkins-Hitchens PR campaign motivates many atheists to be ever more vocal in attacking and complaining about religion. Yet does […]
Dr. Jonathan Castro, coauthor of a recent Nature paper on the ascent of magma at Chaiten in Chile, fields questions from Eruptions readers.
Save yourself the time and effort: parents have much less influence over their children’s personality than we think, says controversial psychologist Judith Rich Harris.
If people realized how different they are from their fellow citizens, the country would fall apart in a weekend. Working as a journalist taught me that. I can’t help noticing, […]
Michael Stone is an expert on evil. A forensic psychiatrist and professor at Columbia, Stone has cataloged and classified evil acts into a 22-point scale for his show on the […]
Chef Wylie Dufresne believes in playing with his food—but not in the usual sense of the phrase. In his popular New York restaurant, wd-50, Dufresne applies molecular gastronomy, a field […]
Todd Purdum has a feature in Vanity Fair this month that is so rich with insight, color, and analysis regarding the communication challenges facing the Obama administration that I immediately […]
Roughly 100 audience members turned out to Monday’s talk at the National Academies on “Communicating about Evolution” co-sponsored by the NIH and part of their spring lecture series on Evolution […]
If you look up “Obama Accomplishments” on Google right now, you will see my blog, Brown Man Thinking Hard, pop up on the first page of results. This is normally […]
What do God, Dr. Frankenstein, and Lady Gaga have in common? They are all names that geneticist-cum-media-sensation Craig Venter has been called since announcing in May that he had created […]
Call it a case of extreme optimistic bias: Many climate advocates point to polls that show when the public is asked directly, a majority say they are “concerned” about global […]
The opening weekend of Eat, Pray, Love is being billed as a success, earning $23 million and second only to Sly Stallone’s action ensemble The Expendables at $35 million. Not […]
“Software should always be free because all users of software deserve freedom,” says Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, and a longtime activist. But […]
Last week, John Holdren appeared for a 45 minute interview on NPR Science Friday with host Ira Flatow. Below the fold, I have pasted excerpts of his comments relative to […]
Following the AAAS meetings in February, I had this to say about the future of science and environmental journalism: The future will be online, in film, and/or multi-media, merging reporting […]
The new activity at Indonesia’s Sinabung continues and now over 21,000 people have been evacuated. Meanwhile, Etna continues to rumble away, possibly towards a new eruptive cycle.
This week’s On the MediaspotlightsRushmore Drive, the new search engine marketed to African Americans (audio above). As the program describes, the search engine uses a unique algorithm to find those […]
Polygamy is alive and well in parts of America. According to researchers at Brigham Young University, there are 30,000 to 50,000 people currently living a polygamist lifestyle in the United […]
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman from Tabriz, Iran, whose sentence of execution by stoning was the subject of an international campaign, has received a reprieve from the Iranian Government. Over […]
AVO reports that it appears that the volcano has potentially erupted – or at least released a lot of steam and (possibly) ash. So much for the end of activity.
“I think the primary technological barrier that keeps us from being more emotionally engaged with video games is the barrier of speech,” says Jesse Schell, the video game designer and […]
Despite what the brainiacs from the Ivy League say, citizen’s arrests are not vigilante acts, according to Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa. In fact, he insists that they have been […]
There are two generalizable findings on influencing behavior change. First, citizens are more likely to get involved politically if they see members of their peer group or social group getting […]
Financial regulatory reform will soon be a reality, almost two years after the devastating financial crash of 2008. A 2,300 page bill was passed by the Senate in a 60-38 […]
Two stories this week featured young black men and race. In one story, a young black man in his mid thirties who reported that he was often harassed at work […]
I did an interview this morning with Elie Dolgin of The Scientist magazine discussing the “going broad” media strategy surrounding Darwinius masillae aka Ida the fossil. The magazine has the […]
Economic troubles and what to do about them are not unlike climate change or biomedical research. Both economic policy and science policy can be deeply complex and uncertain and can […]
When Frank Welsh wrote his outstanding one-volume history of Hong Kong, he titled it “A Borrowed Place.” In I Like Hong Kong… Art and Deterritorialization, Frank Vigneron, an Associate Professor […]
Confidence is a trait typically cast as a higher-order function in the brain. It’s at once the act of making a decision, recognizing the decision as thought, and measuring the […]