Just before Rip Van Winkle falls into his thirty-year slumber, he encounters the ghostly spectacle of a handful of ancient Dutch colonials playing at ninepins, the thunder rolling across the […]
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The robotic future is here, and it looks nothing like we thought it would. Instead of humanoid, highly-intelligent robots that do our bidding, the future is increasingly one of robotic […]
If you’re a parent and you want to introduce your child to art, it’s sometimes hard to find that perfect combination of optimism and imagination in a single artist. Too […]
Do you remember the scene in the The Breakfast Club in which Brian, the lovable geek played by Anthony Michael Hall, is asked what he would need a fake I.D. […]
Obviously, people’s priorities differ. But it’s fair to say that culturally speaking, the United States leans in the direction of intense productivity at the expense of time spent reading a good book, or in the company of friends and family.
Facing deep budget cuts in 2013, the space agency is casting a wider net when it comes to getting new ideas. So if you have a novel thought on getting to Mars cheaply, speak up.
In addition to in-house R&D, big businesses like Best Buy and Blue Cross Blue Shield are funding start ups to create new product lines and innovate the direction of the company.
You’d think that a giant retrospective at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC would, at least momentarily, make George Bellows the king of the art ring. But once […]
I usually write optimistic posts. This is going to be a scary one. I apologize in advance. While I was in Columbus last month, I mentioned the furnace-like heat. Well, […]
What is the Big Idea? A new ad released by Rick Santorum’s campaign team inserted President Obama’s face for a split-second into a montage about Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The […]
Any day now, the Supreme Court will release its ruling on the individual mandate in President Obama’s healthcare reform. It will inspire pontification about how far the government can “interfere” […]
New research in The Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science finds that people who shop at organic food stores are more inclined to be judgmental. Organic foods “reduce prosocial […]
Jesse Bering is the author of the new book, “Why is the Penis Shaped Like that?: And Other Reflections on Being Human.” He is well known in my circles as […]
Google is not the only company working on augmented reality glasses. In fact, there are six products available for purchase, ranging from skiing goggles to manufacturing applications.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that 56.9 million people died in 2008. Of those, 63.5% died because of Group II causes (i.e., noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)), and almost 30% died because […]
So Cato Institute president Ed Crane is taking an “early retirement” and megabucks former BB&T CEO John Allison is set to take his place. It’s easy to see why Allison […]
More or less anybody who has ever done anything newsworthy can cite, as Henry Rollins can, some turning point at which they made a risky decision that paid off, and a lifelong sense of mission not easily derailed by minor failures.
When people recall how virtuously they have acted in the past, they are more likely to permit themselves self-destructive or anti-social behavior, says new research on the dark side of goodness.
The 3D printing process has caught on slowly among manufacturers but recent gains show promise. Companies like GE are using 3D printers to make highly-refined machine parts.
BIG THINKER Daniel Honan reminds us that Mayor Bloomberg is not in any obvious sense an ideologue. He’s just about using the power of government to curtail behavior that costs the […]
For many Americans, burgers and fireworks may be enough of a July 4th celebration. But to appreciate the curiosities and meaning of Independence Day, you might want to sit down […]
Would you exchange your personal privacy for an Internet that’s not boring? Companies like Airtime – which launched to a mix of acclaim, hype and skepticism last week – certainly hope so. They hope that you will allow certain […]
I can still vividly remember reading, back in 2001, the New York Times Magazinewrite-up on the release of The Corrections. It began: Some days, Jonathan Franzen wrote in the dark. […]
Our species’ history appears to be aligned to the length of our weapons: how far, how much, how long can we keep attacking, killing, damaging? Men with bullets became men […]
I interviewed Paul Zak, founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, for the first time two years ago. We met for a coffee at Neuroscience […]
Engineers at MIT have discovered a new way of gathering depth information that could be used to create 3D cameras requiring only the modest processing power of a smartphone.
After writing my previous post chastising the National Atheist Party, I thought (and hoped) that I’d be done writing about Reason Rally drama. Alas, it was not to be. Apparently, […]
There are many ways to look at Europe other than as a collection of nation-states. Plenty of other imagined communities lurk beneath the surface of the standard political map. Check […]
What is the Big Idea? While Congress dukes it out over the federal interest rates on student loans, venture capitalist Peter Thiel has a solution for college students who don’t […]
Psychology is rich in findings that emerge from complex statistics done on the behavior of college students behaving for money or course credit. It’s fair to wonder, then, how well […]