My thought experiments don’t happen in my mind. I undertake these experiments out in the world.
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We won’t be able to solve the major problems that we have without more intelligence.
Studies show that weight gain is happening in the wider animal kingdom as well — in our pets, yes, but also among some captive and wild animals. No one really knows why.
Today we are celebrating 7 of the most popular – and indeed they turn out to be among the most interesting – ideas of the summer of 2013.
Many Americans are being misled on serious scientific issues, and science journalists have to spend an inordinate amount of time debunking myths which seemingly never die.
Make no mistake about it. Seamus Heaney, widely regarded as the world’s greatest poet of the last half century, was Irish.
This week a New Jersey state appeals court determined that if a person knowingly sends a text to someone who’s driving, and the driver is involved in an accident as a result, the texter could be held liable.
How is it that something 460 miles long, 6 miles wide and, and up to 2,600 feet deep would go unnoticed until now?
This image is an illustration of a knot of gas that is six trillion miles, or about one light year long.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk – recently named by TED’s Chris Anderson as one of the most innovative thinkers in the world today – is at it again, this time with a plan […]
There’s a kind of hostility to teachers that underlines the current corporate reform narrative.
I just came to realize that what we got involved in and what I had been supporting was turning education into a desiccated, data-driven, anti-human activity and this would not encourage the love of learning.
The year-old startup, which operates in San Francisco and Austin, has many plans for people’s mail, not the least of which is “making [it] as sortable and searchable as email.”
It’s a fact of life that we are surrounded by points of view and by propaganda that is heavily messaged and it’s meant to persuade us of something.
Big food, which is industrial food, big farming, which is agribusiness, and big pharma all profit from making people sicker and fatter.
The element molybdenum, delivered via Martian meteorite, could have served as the catalyst for the development of organic molecules, which became the first living things on the planet.
The road-side exterior wall of a hotel in one flood-prone London district is covered with a 21-foot-high vertical garden that acts as a “350-square-meter green sponge.”
Behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists have identified attitudes, beliefs, and other factors that contribute to risky behavior.
By understanding a modern picture of cosmology, even at just an intuitive non-detailed level, people can get a wonderful spiritual sense of how they fit into the universe.
Adam Conway’s custom-built drone only cost about US$100 to make, and although it still needs a bit of work, the technology behind it could prove useful in a variety of situations.
We should be cautious about assuming that we know the shape of the future.
The iPhone is essentially an extension of the human mind, and that’s totally natural.
The end of the world has been coming for quite some time. As Reza Aslan points out in Zealot, Jesus Christ was not the only End Times preacher with stock […]
The project is a collaboration between the city’s public transportation authority, a bookstore and an online education provider. Riders can pick up a book at one stop and drop it off at another.
In an attempt to dial down sex trade street traffic, the city erected an outdoor compound on an industrial site. It consists of drive-in “sex boxes” with special precautions built in to protect prostitutes from predatory clients.
As comedian Martin Mull (allegedly) once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Sound’s non-verbal qualities help it elude any attempts to pin it down definitively through the […]
A new study suggests that the necessary ingredients for life existed on Mars first, back when it was far more hospitable than it is now, and arrived here via a meteorite.
University of Nevada-Reno engineers have created a composite of nickel titanium — the material that gives eyeglass frames their flexibility — that can reinforce and stabilize bridges better than traditional steel and concrete.
President Obama gave a stirring speech today in Washington, D.C. He reflected on those who marched 50 years ago today. He praised the “brilliance” of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. […]
Stop using ‘literally’ figuratively!