A 1940 map of a fictional continent slightly resembling South America, symbolising different aspects of the new and exciting world of plastics
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n n This map, made by Mahmud Kashgari bin Husayn bin Muhammad, was included in his Divanu Lügat-it-Türk, a scientific work he published in 1072 (AD) for the benefit of […]
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.
This has been the “Summer of the Spill.” Since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion on April 20, 2010, the epic BP oil spill has oozed into imaginations trying to […]
“Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated”, Mark Twain famously responded after reading his obituary in the New York Journal. To which may now be added “Reports of the […]
In the latest issue of the journal Public Understanding of Science, Lorraine Whitmarsh from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in the UK, publishes a study that finds that […]
Is ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson a PR juggernaut who takes advantage of the ideological innocence of general assignment and TV reporters?In his regular column at Portfolio magazine, former NY Times […]
Mysterious in origin, but at least they look pretty on a map
The famous and not-so-famous dead of Pere Lachaise
The key to fighting Alzheimer’s disease may be a single brain protein called amyloid beta, which is the subject of dozens of current scientific studies. A recent New York Times article […]
AS the dust begins to settle on an extraordinary week dominated by the astonishing spectacle of a former Prime Minister peddling memoirs whose vulgarity and venality thoroughly demeans the office […]
California’s varied landscape has stood in for half the world in Hollywood movies. Here is Paramount Studios’ 1927 map of international filming locations, all set in California.
I’ve long questioned the value of anonymous blogging or commenting. Much of the incivility online can be attributed to anonymity. And with a rare few exceptions, if you can’t participate […]
Readers in the DC area will definitely want to check out the upcoming event on June 23 at the National Academies. Details are posted below. I hope to be able […]
The philosopher Paul Kurtz has published a new position booklet that addresses much of what I have been arguing is missing–and so deeply troubling–about the New Atheist movement. Below is […]
Bora continues to play a very important role in synthesizing and interpreting the whole strange chorus that seems to be going on in reaction to our Framing Science thesis. In […]
Nobel-Prize winning physicist William Phillips admits that “laser cooling” is a somewhat confusing concept. How can light energy, generally thought of as a source of heat, be used to cool […]
Bloomberg reports this week that News Corp., which own both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association in June—a contribution that dwarfs […]
n Another traffic map of sorts. If this world map vaguely looks like it’s highlighting a remnant of the British Empire, that’s no coincidence. This map shows which side of […]
Art critic Karen Wright charts her run-ins with English painter David Hockney over the last ten years. The prolific painter has taken to photography and even drawing on his iPhone.
Over the past decade, best-selling books such as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point have told compelling stories of how marketers and political consultants use “influentials,” “mavens,” “connectors,” and “navigators” to […]
The transcript of the interview I did last week at NPR’s On the Media is now available. In the interview, I restate exactly what we argued first at Science and […]
Photographer Ansel Adams claimed that the goal of his art was “to rekindle an appreciation of the marvelous.” Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light at the Amon Carter Museum rekindles the marvelous […]
Physicists have developed an experiment involving super cold matter and an empty elevator shaft that will test one concept crucial to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
David B. Hart writes that the “New Atheism” has “proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment.”
Some see a shallow sitcom or feather-light comedy. Matt Zoller Seitz sees “radical sincerity” in Glee, “one of the most stylistically bold broadcast network shows since Twin Peaks.”
If extraterrestrials were monitoring American television, here’s what they would be watching. In the Fomalhaut system, for example, maybe everybody’s crazy about Miami Vice.
n English is the dominant language in the British Isles, also in their Celtic fringe – Ireland, Scotland, Wales. In Scotland but mainly in Ireland, some territorial measures have been […]
The Treaty of London gave the eastern half to the Netherlands, creating its curious southern panhandle