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The speed of light in a vacuum is the limit for massless particles, but massive ones are limited even further! “All our sweetest hours fly the fastest.” -Virgil If you’ve been […]

You’ll be investing 5-to-7 years of your life. What will you get back? “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” –Benjamin Franklin Recently, a number of people — of widely different ages […]

Researchers have come up with a printing process involving a special silver-based conductive ink that can deposit itself to paper. For home hobbyists, it could bridge the gap between a plastic casing and a working electronic device.

It was the most promising idea for where new physics might lie. Now that the LHC data is in, is it dead? “The revolution is not an apple that falls when […]

A new image editing method will have graphic designers cheering and weeping in equal measure. The new technique lets you take a two-dimensional image, and with as little as three […]

     You know those national debt counters, with the numbers that rapidly get bigger and bigger? Or those global population counters  that do the same thing? Well now comes a […]

A conversation with Matt Arnold, Managing Director and Head of the Office of Environmental Affairs, JPMorgan Chase.

Postifier is a tiny device that uses infrared light to determine whether the mailman has paid a visit, and then notifies the recipient when they and their smartphone are within easy reach of the mailbox.

When all the galaxies, stars, gas, dust, dark matter and all the other forms of matter and radiation are summed together, its energy still pales in comparison to dark energy. […]

The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald is a traitor and should be arrested. Glenn Greenwald is a hero and a practicing journalist. That’s the debate in mainstream media that’s overshadowing the news […]

At a recent event, a Qualcomm executive demonstrated how scattering small cellular base stations among homes in a neighborhood could provide users with stronger signals and more efficient data transmission.

A rejoinder to the author of the Neurobonkers blog post criticizing my take on Edward Snowden. 

Michael Malice is one of those uniquely New York characters. An immigrant from the former Soviet Union, the thirty-six year old with spikey hair, cunning eyes, and a constant mischievous […]

A little over a year ago, I wrote aboutThe Herb Block Foundation’s gloom and doom report titled The Golden Age for Editorial Cartoonists at the Nation’s Newspapers is Over. Founded […]

For help in this endeavor they’re turning to, among others, Charles Darwin, a University of California-Berkeley researcher, and an illustrator at Pixar.

1. Are Intelligent Machines a Threat to ‘Human Exceptionalism’? “Is it time to take seriously the prospect of artificial intelligence emulating human abilities?” Yes, says Ray Kurzweil in his book How to Create a […]

Over the past couple of years, my thinking has been greatly influenced by the “Prophets of Progress”—people like Stephen Pinker, Matt Ridley, Stephen Johnson, Hans Rosling, and Peter Diamandis to […]

Is American Exceptionalism “the old whiskey bottle we pull off the shelf when we’re feeling down?”

As I mentioned earlier, I took part in a discussion panel at Skepticon V last month, How Should Rationalists Approach Relationships and Marriage? The video of that panel is now […]

Last night was one of the most exciting Academy Awards ceremonies. Some of the excitement came from the incredible performances—Dame Shirley Bassey singing “Gold Finger,” Barbra Streisand popping up with […]

This month, proceeds from the purchase of any of three branded items displayed within the popular social game FarmVille 2 will go to the nonprofit organization Water.org.

This week’s unveiling of Leo Villareal’s The Bay Lights (shown above), the world’s largest LED sculpture running along 1.8 miles of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, shone a light on more […]

According to Matt Ridley, as long as we trust each other we will be able to trade knowledge and expand knowledge at accelerating rates. 

What is collective intelligence? Experts such as Matt Ridley weigh in on the mating of ideas and what it means for our future human prosperity.

A team of Dutch scientists have discovered where in the brain the meaning of words are created. Further study could help doctors identify awareness in people with cognitive disorders. 

Ekso Bionics is developing exoskeleton-like devices combined with robotics that will help people with walking difficulties get moving again.

The idea of forgery resonates more than ever today in a culture in which “the open exchange of ideas has been rebranded as piracy.” 

The Democrats, at their convention, stood so stridently for the rights of the liberated single woman that they offered the Republicans the opportunity to counter with a defense of the […]

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. 

Like millions of other Americans over Thanksgiving weekend, I went to see Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, Lincoln.  I was mesmerized by Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of the great statesman. I was also […]