Thinkers worried about the Web rotting our brains would find an ally in the ancient Greek sage. But are their fears justified?
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A century after its publication as The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce’s comic lexicon remains a beautifully nasty piece of work. Though it’s a work of satire first and foremost, its […]
So I’m spending the week speaking at and otherwise participating in the national honors program of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute–a conservative educational foundation. The students are spectacularly impressive. They come from […]
Waterbirths are so passe. Today’s elite stunt-birther wants the obstetrical equivalent of a fish pedicure, a koi assisted birth. From the FAQ: Why koi? Koi, or 錦鯉, are ornamental varieties […]
This past spring semester, American University hosted an event featuring Roger Pielke Jr., a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder and author of The Climate Fix: What […]
Farmers markets are wildly popular among the urban elite in Washington, D.C. and other urban areas across the country. In a guest post today, Melissa Winn considers efforts to expand […]
Don’t just kill that guy, says Paul Rubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Kill him a lot.“ It’s a funny line (a great line, really) because it plays with the […]
13-year-old Google is going through a patch of mid-life anxiety. With upstarts like Facebook nipping at its heels, the company is shaking things up in an effort to stay ahead of the game.
Welcome to the club. Let’s begin with the name, which is swiped from the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, a philosophy discussion group founded in 1878 for Cambridge men who were doing […]
Researchers at Purdue University created a high-resolution, interactive map that shows where U.S. carbon emissions originate. The highest amounts don’t necessarily come from the places you’d expect. The southeastern states, […]
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Education moved from a bespoke craft to a more industrial approach. […] Still, one-to-one tutoring is the learning method proven time and again to sharply improve a student’s measured performance. […]
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s August 6th prayer rally, The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis, has already garnered criticism for being a Christians-only affair that blurred […]
If you are in the housing and real estate development business, an investor or simply thinking about your own housing options the baby boomers are shaping your future fortunes again […]
It’s natural to watch a child closely to see where he or she might excel. But surveillance that drills down to the subatomic level via personal D.N.A. testing is ridiculous.
As we head off into the weekend, I thought I’d put up a new Mystery Volcano Photo. If you remember the last one, it was a doozy submitted by my former introductory […]
After spending years building robots at MIT’s Media Lab and doing stints at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Heather Knight is now a PhD student in social robotics at Carnegie Mellon. […]
Scientists have found nicotine receptors in the brain of mice that appear to influence appetite. Might researchers one day engineer a weight-loss drug that mimics nicotine?
Gossip: you can’t avoid it. And maybe, you shouldn’t want to. Scientists have argued that gossip is an important tool for social cohesion and information transmission, allowing us to function […]
A project, two years in the making, was revealed this week at the Computer Human Interaction conference in B.C. The device created by students from Texas A&M University is called ZeroTouch […]
This essay was previously published on AlterNet. In a campaign speech in September, Rick Perry hit upon some familiar Republican themes: Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, in an appeal to […]
I’m nonplussed by Mary Elizabeth Williams’ comment today, over at Salon, that Anthony Weiner’s impending fatherhood “drastically changed” the Weinergate drama. Not that I disagree that “the timing of Weiner’s […]
More and more of the soldiers being put in harm’s way in Iraq are actually machines. Scholar and Wired for War author P.W. Singer explains what happens when science fiction becomes battlefield reality.
The celebrity sex tape seems to be a modern phenomenon, but long before voyeurs could download the peccadilloes of Paris and Pam there was The Night Banquet of Han Xizai. […]
This conservative post has nothing to do with the ISI conference, but it does have to do with education. All over the internet, we find the conclusion that America is […]
Amidst the nuclear crisis in Japan, the F.D.A. is alerting consumers to be wary of internet sites and other retail outlets promoting products making false claims to prevent or treat effects of radiation.
James Wood is probably the best literary critic working today. If he wrote a review of the phone book, I would read it. This week, though, I find myself disagreeing […]
I’ve had an interesting conversation with a colleague the past few days about an earlier piece I wrote here, Cool Dudes, Hot Temps: The Climate Change Battle Will Get […]
Carlo Maria Broschi, better known as Farinelli, was one of the most celebrated opera singers of all time, and the 18th century equivalent of a rock star (“One God and […]
Not surprisingly, the publishing industry is full of bibliophiles who love the body of the printed book almost as much as its soul. Rick Richter, the founder and president of Ruckus Mobile Media, is the rare exception.
Humanities courses are starting to be deeply influenced by a new array of powerful digital tools and vast online archives. Undergraduates are experiencing Shakespeare in 3-D!