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Learning guru John Seely Brown is not being even slightly ironic when he says that he’d hire an expert player of World of Warcraft (the massive multiplayer online fantasy videogame) […]

Ed: Brian O’Neill, the co-founder of Waq al-waq, returns home with this piece on today’s attack on the US Embassy in Sanaa. (Before we start, I’d like to thank Greg […]

It has recently occurred to me that I’m Martian. My friends have taken to smiling and nodding when I talk about this. Some of them have been persuaded. Some of […]

Can you imagine your local burger joint decked out with white tablecloths and candles? Neither can we. However, a study suggests that a calmer redecoration of fast-food restaurants could help prevent overeating.

Since the publication in 1983 of Hayden Herrera’s groundbreaking biography of Frida Kahlo, “Fridamania” in all its forms has flowered around the world. Her art and her appearance have become […]

Following up on my post about the preventable death of Savita Halappanavar due to anti-choice theology, three Catholic blogs at Patheos have weighed in: “Savita’s tragic death could have been […]

A new type of low-cost, high-energy cell could make solar power much more affordable and widespread.

With a tween in the house I’ve rediscovered the ruthless economy of cool. I’ve remembered that cool is as unforgiving of bad timing as the stock market. One minute the […]

Scientists have successfully figured out how to merge bioengineered human tissue with a nanoelectronic monitoring system.

Charles Darwin’s correspondence reveals how he struggled with the work-life balance and how that influenced his decision on whether or not to get married. 

Five hundred years ago today, Michelangelo unveiled The Sistine Chapel Ceiling to Pope Julius II. The next day, All Saints’ Day 1512, the Pope inaugurated the newly decorated chapel with […]

The 2012 election is officially over, and it was glorious. Barack Obama and the Democrats have delivered what one of our elder statesmen once referred to as “a thumping” to […]

            This blog often talks about risks that we fret over too much. Time to talk about one we worry about too little; the air we breath…indoors. For a number […]

Twitter is often asked to give up user information to government agencies and Twitter often complies. Not this time.

For a mental health break, this weekend I wanted to write about something extremely cool: 3D printing, an emerging technological trend that’s been covered by, among others, the Telegraph, the […]

What’s the Big Idea? It started with furniture, Kip Tindell remembers. When the Dallas-based entrepreneur set out with his partners to launch a venture in 1978, the idea was to sell […]

Although the initial riots and flare-ups of violence over the “Innocence of Muslims” video were over a month ago, the global battle over blasphemy laws is still raging. In London […]

A decade ago, Chris Hedges titled his analysis of the addictive power of war War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If war truly is a force that gives […]

The XTR3D is a touch-free software interface that only requires a simple 2-D camera to operate. XTR3D creates a three-dimensional image of the user which can then be used to […]

What happens when you do make it to the top of your field, only to find that it’s not exactly what you’d expected or been told to expect?

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America, as a private membership-based organization, had the right to discriminate against gay people by expelling them or barring […]

Have you ever walked past a monument, stopped to see what or whom it was for, and either still had no idea what or whom it was memorializing or had […]

The neuroscience of creativity is flourishing. But will the popularity of this subject lead to better, or sloppier science?

A California company has developed new ‘microfluidics’ technology in which fluid sacs rise up like buttons from a flat touchscreen, then seemingly disappear on a user’s command. 

What’s the Big Idea? As the K-12 school year starts up again in full force, it’s worth asking: are American public schools really failing? According to the measure set by […]

Before reading please click ‘View Entire Story’. My apologies for the length. Over at the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan wrote an article against abortion. It’s not entirely clear whether Hasan […]

I was speaking at The University of Texas — Pan American not long ago and a student asked me a question that had never been asked of me in more […]

A couple years ago, the government of New York City created a program on resilience to climate change and sea level rise. Many of the steps that program laid out […]

Arguments on both sides of this question were aired at a thought-provoking colloquium sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College on September 21-22: “Does the President Matter? A […]

We pay special attention to the history of an object – where it has been, who created it, what touched it – because object’s history is what really matters when it comes to its value.