The great benefit of education, “the key to increasingly upward mobility,” is expanding the vocabulary of students.
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Some links from the last week: • As you may have heard, my good friend and awesome secular activist Greta Christina was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. It’s fully treatable, but […]
By fitting a computer, a camera, and a projector into the spot where the bulb would go, the lamp can display information onto a surface, and recognize and respond to user contact with that surface.
Doctors and medical professionals critical of patents on individual human genes have won their day before the Supreme Court, arguing that monopolies on scientific research are harmful.
Despite the fact that the label has been on restaurant menus for years, the authentic version never left Japan until this year. The US is the third country to receive shipments.
Today, predictive analytics’ all-encompassing scope already reaches the very heart of a functioning society. Several mounting ingredients promise to spread prediction even more pervasively: bigger data, better computers, wider familiarity, and advancing science.
The outcome of a ménage à trois involving desperation, selfishness, and moral consideration, apology came into the world already tainted by its origin. Out of these weak beginnings, we could […]
On February 20, a conservative Christian group, the National Center for Law & Policy (NCLP), filed a lawsuit against the Encinitas School Board for teaching yoga in public schools. The […]
Years ago, when my friends and I were applying for competitive fellowships, awards, and school admissions, we had a macabre joke that there were times when we must have been […]
Editor’s Note: Today I’m thrilled to have a guest post by Adam Baron, an excellent journalist, who is working and writing from Yemen. Today, he wrote a must-read story on […]
Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts.
Recent studies suggest that Americans might be the worst research subjects on the planet. As one writer put it recently, “researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.”
Over at Edge.org, its impresario John Brockman poses an annual question to his assemblage of scientists, scholars, writers and other insightful people. This year’s (suggested by George Dyson), was this: […]
Nothing hurts like a blown call. Baseball’s bittersweet beauty owes much to moments such as Umpire Jim Joyce’s missing a call to rob Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga of a […]
To know where you’re heading, it helps to know where you’ve come from. And with the last grains of sand slipping through the hourglass, now is the perfect time to […]
If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]
Earlier this week, I posted a petition asking the leaders of atheist and secular organizations to support feminism and measures to improve diversity and stop harassment. The petition went up […]
California voters will be asked in November whether the state should require labels to inform consumers that their food contains genetically modified ingredients. Supporters base their case on scientific evidence […]
When is a gaffe not a gaffe? Short answer: When it is said and done over, and over, and over. Take a certain wing of the Republican party, the wing […]
Nothing says I Love You like exsanguination, whipping, and the sweet nothing whispered in the ear of a mutual pledge not to machete each other to death. Or so an […]
A reader in his late 20s writes to me and poses this not-uncommon dilemma. The reader does not like his close friend’s fiancée. At all. He worries that his friend […]
This past weekend, I was in Springfield, Missouri for Skepticon V (“the fifth most annual Skepticon yet”). I had such a fantastic time at Skepticon IV in 2011, it was […]
A year ago Mike Konczal noticed something stunning about the stories on the We Are the 99% Tumblr: The people in them don’t sound like late 20th century consumers who […]
It disappeared from central London in 1869, after an archeological magazine praised its historical value
The sight of a grown man trying to stuff a bobbing plastic doll into a jar of what he claims to be his own urine is a sad thing, but […]
Psychological Science in the Public Interest evaluated ten techniques for improving learning, ranging from mnemonics to highlighting and came to some surprising conclusions.
A new report from the World Resources Institute says that at least 1,199 coal plants are being planned worldwide, with a growing number of them proposed for developing countries.
It’s that time of the year again when techno pundits are once again breathlessly telling us all about the technology and innovation trends that will be big in 2013. That’s […]
New research suggests that living in the moment, rather than being preoccupied with outside concerns, can extend the life of your body’s DNA and keep it from aging prematurely.
I’ve written some overarching thoughts about last week’s presidential election, but I wanted to dwell on one of its more fascinating aspects: the extent to which the Republican party was […]