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Engineer James Clarke liberated John, Paul, George, and Ringo from their mono and stereo straitjackets using algorithms at Abbey Road.

Dave Eggers book, “The Circle,” uses satire to illuminate how privacy is fast becoming a lost virtue in the digital age.

A cartogram makes it easy to compare regional and national GDPs at a glance.

The microbes that eventually produced the planet’s oxygen had to breathe something, after all.

Both panoramic and detailed, this infographic manages to show both the size and distribution of world religions.

A much-needed “causal revolution” has arrived in Judea Pearl’s ‘The Book of Why’. But despite vast improvements over “trad stats”, there’s cause for concern over logic-losing numbers.

With liquid water, an energy source, and the perfect raw ingredients, Enceladus might be the holy grail we’ve been seeking. This article is written by contributing author Jesse Shanahan. Jesse is […]

What would it take to adopt a basic income? Frank Stilwell, a Professor Emeritus in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, explains the pros and cons.

The chicken you eat comes from birds that only live for 5 years and are susceptible to disease and inbreeding. Thank goodness Koen Vanmechelen bred a better one.

Ariana Miyamoto, the biracial woman recently named Miss Universe Japan, is hoping to persuade her country’s citizens into broadening their perception of what is authentically Japanese.

Economics and fiction both seek to describe and explain human nature. Measured against what makes fiction feel realistic, the tales of mainstream economists don’t ring true. Yet they govern us.

The massive damage humans have done to the natural world has provoked a backlash that could be just as dangerous, or more. There is a growing global rejection of technology and almost anything human-made in favor of whatever is more ‘natural’. But a simplistic rejection of modern technologies eliminates many of our best options for solving the problems we’ve created.

“Be suspicious of stories,” warns economist Tyler Cowen. Stories lower “your IQ by 10 points or more,” by seducing you into simplistic “good vs. evil” thinking.” Life is too messy […]

Memories triggered by smell are more emotional than those triggered by sounds, pictures or words

This brings me to an ancient Greek, the master himself, Socrates of Athens. In a segment of Gorgias that foresees decades of modern psychological research, the erudite interlocutor observes that […]

What’s the Big Idea?  For some of us, it was Spock. For others, a humiliating performance as a pilgrim in the kindergarten musical.  For me, it was William Blake’s relentless […]

Very handy cartography

The angels, cherubs and putti depicted in Christmas nativity scenes are “anatomically flawed” according to a scientist who claims they would never be able to fly with their flimsy wings.