There are three things an idea must do to become a full-fledged scientific theory. How does the Multiverse stack up? “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead […]
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I can see it in your eyes. I can see it in your smile.
An Applicant’s Guide To NASA Astronaut Selection This guest post was written by Brian Shiro: NOAA geophysicist, NASA researcher, and co-founder of Astronauts for Hire. “I wasn’t destined to be […]
There are three kinds of BS, explains Stewart, and all three made appearances last night.
The way you experience time changes when you near the speed of light. So what happens when you actually reach it? “Everyone has his dream; I would like to live […]
Objective truth is fine if we want to know the weather conditions, but to live as a human in a human society, a more nuanced approach is needed to knowledge and understanding.
The next wave of retirees will be more tech-savvy than ever.
Now that New Horizons has flown by the Plutonian system, can it be considered a planet after all? “Words are the source of misunderstandings.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Back in 1930, […]
Researchers advanced the fields of social science by working together and peer reviewing the evidence. Couldn’t the same benefits be attained by treating religion in the same manner?
Since 1979, middle-income workers have seen their wages rise 6 percent. That’s an average raise of 0.167 percent a year.
Ten years ago, a researcher claimed most published research findings are false; now a decade later, his claim is stronger than ever before. How can this be?
A prominent performance artist accuses Big Oil of focusing more on cleaning up their image than their business’ collateral damage… and charges cultural institutions that take Big Oil sponsorship money as accomplices to that crime.
The FDA has until the end of the summer to pass a decision as to whether or not flibanserin is safe for the consumer market. Emotions are high and many women would do anything for even a small improvement in their sex lives.
Is it possible that our problems indicate a flaw in the theory of gravity? “I soon became convinced… that all the theorizing would be empty brain exercise and therefore a […]
What do “Yesterday,” “Satisfaction,” “My Generation,” “The Sound of Silence,” “California Girls,” and “Like a Rolling Stone” all have in common? They were all hits in 1965, the year author Andrew Grant Jackson calls “the most revolutionary year in music.” In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, Jackson weaves a fascinating narrative of how popular music and social change influenced one another to create a year memorable not only for great music, but also for great progress in American culture. In this whirlwind tour of multiple genres of music as well as multiple pressing political issues, Jackson states a compelling case for 1965 as a key turning point in American music and society as well as provides a mirror for how music and society interact today, 50 years later.
President John F. Kennedy famously implored Americans to ask “what you can do for your country” rather than “what your country can do for you.” That’s nice rhetoric, but the […]
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling this week protecting free speech on the Internet by clarifying the standards by which people can be convicted for making potential threats online.
Can a running start really improve your driving distance in golf? “What a shot by Happy Gilmore! <aside> Who the hell is Happy Gilmore?”–Announcer, from Happy Gilmore As I prepare […]
Nature invented software billions of years before we did. “The origin of life is really the origin of software,” says Gregory Chaitin (inventor of mathematical metabiology). Life requires what software does. It is fundamentally algorithmic. And its complexity needs better thinking tools.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an odious right-wing organization dedicated to spreading offensive messages about Muslims, won a federal court battle this week against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) […]
Sitting cheek-by-jowl in the packed press gallery at the Supreme Court on Tuesday and listening to 150 minutes of oral arguments in the historic same-sex marriage cases, I marveled at […]
Add static electricity to the long list of things we thought we understood, but didn’t. “Electricity can be dangerous. My nephew tried to stick a penny into a plug. Whoever […]
“World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.”
Our “follow your dreams” culture encourages us to listen to our gut, while society demands practicality. But what does that mean for artists?
He hasn’t shot an episode of Let’s Make a Deal for decades, but Monty Hall’s name still graces a statistical brouhaha from the early 1990s, and the drama he cultivated on […]
Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor and the brother of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, performed a valuable public service on Wednesday when he sent what I would hope is the […]
“Daddy, why do all the players have dark skin?” When my eldest daughter posed this question one football Saturday six years ago, she had no concept of race in mind […]
“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”
An English teacher explains why parents who want their kids to love reading need to let them choose their own books.
Compared to a human lifetime, the Universe is ancient.But even a single year holds important changes. “We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we […]