Against all odds and predictions the Food Safety and Modernization Act passed Congress this week. President Obama is expected to sign the legislation, the first major overhaul of the country’s […]
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Today Charlie Savage of the New York Times, who does an excellent job making complicated legal stories understandable, has a piece on the latest bit of Guantanamo Bay news. According […]
The Christmas season should be a lot less long. We should do more, if not all, of our carol singing, partying, giving, and such between Christmas and Epiphany.
“2010 was the year that removed all doubt that cybersecurity is now a geopolitical problem.” As reflections on the WikiLeaks saga turn into prognosticating about the future of cyber-security, so […]
James Cameron’s Avatar was the highest-grossing film of all time last year. This year it can boast a new accolade: it was the film illegally downloaded most often.
Don’t underestimate the significance of China’s rise. We are living through the biggest shift in wealth, power, and prestige since the Industrial Revolution.
Anosognosia is an intriguing neuropsychological syndrome in which a patient with one or more paralysed limbs denies they have anything wrong with them. A form of Freudian defense?
Afters months of waiting, I have finally been able to get my act together enough to post the answers to questions you posed to Dr. Adam Kent. If you remember […]
Well, we’ve reached the holidays again, so Eruptions will be heading off on its annual Holiday break. After this rather busy semester – academically, professionally and volcanically – I need […]
Credit rating agencies have too much power to determine the fate of nations. They are unelected, unaccountable, have hugely inflated powers and should be curbed.
The U.K.’s Business Secretary has lost power to block Murdoch’s BSkyB bid after he told two journalists posing as constituents that he had “declared war” on the media magnate.
The weird things we swallow and a wonderful man who dedicated much of his life to removing odd objects from people’s insides are the subject of the new book “Swallow.”
Scans show that most activities only cause a portion of the brain to “light up” with activity. Music makes all of the areas “light up” and create new neural pathways.
The popular perception is that Japan is stagnant but stable despite heavy government debt. So why are analysts earmarking it for the next global meltdown?
About 27 percent of all gene families that exist today were born between 3.3 billion and 2.8 billion years ago, two researchers from MIT have reported in Nature.
Yesterday’s FCC ruling on net neutrality shifts billions in profits and boils down to one fact: There will soon be a fast Internet for the rich and a slow Internet for the poor.
Haley Barbour has obviously forgotten that running for the presidency of the United States is not the same as running for the presidency of the Yazoo City Country Club. Barbour […]
A website will analyze your emails and chats and estimate how well you are in sync with your partner, frenemy or whoever.
What do you get for the child in your life? That’s the big question for so many people around this time of year. If I can make a suggestion for […]
Top writers—from Salman Rushdie to John Irving to Margaret Atwood to Bret Easton Ellis—talk about inspiration, the discipline of writing, and how to create memorable characters.
Tis the season for lists, and Attorney General Eric Holder has one and Anwar al-Awlaki is on it. Speaking to ABC television, Holder said that al-Awlaki was on the same […]
University of Notre Dame law professor John Copeland Nagle thinks it defies representative government for an outgoing Congress to pass legislation after an election.
Can we simplify the universe into a single computer program? That is the question physicist, programmer, businessman, and all-around Renaissance man Stephen Wolfram has dedicated his career to solving. “We […]
It’s long been speculated that the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, has large volcanoes made of ice. In 2005, it was thought that one of these ice volcanoes had been […]
It’s the season for highlighting the best that was written, said, and done in 2010. The consensus is emerging that the most thoughtful TV show (and so the one that […]
If we were able to move our brains, neuron-for-neuron, into a robot, would we still be the same person?
It is the time of the year to look back on the eruptions of 2010. As I did last year, I will be recounting the Volcanic Year in Review and […]
Private contractors cost taxpayers worldwide untold billions in corruption, inefficiency, and mismanagement. The solution isn’t getting rid of them — it’s showing us their paperwork.
Net neutrality is the most important free speech issue of our time, says U.S. Sen. Al Franken, but regulations to be discussed today are badly flawed, he claims.
Most fat cells are “white”, store excess energy and make it tough to lose weight. But mice’s white fat cells have been turned into energy burning brown fat cells. Humans could be next.