Before talking more about happiness, I need to say something about the middle-class way of life we almost all live. To be middle class is to be a free being […]
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Today marks the opening in Washington, DC of the annual meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest event dedicated to science, policy, and culture. […]
Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy—but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them, says Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone Magazine.
After more than 250 days in isolation, three participants of a simulated mission to Mars stepped out to a mock-up of the red planet in Moscow and planted flags in the sand.
Many studies have shown that dolphins can understand human vocabulary and syntax. The problem is that dolphins can’t respond in kind, but now biologists are starting to change that.
Yes, that’s right: Apple isn’t the best at everything. Apple’s new fee structure for premium content not only risks anti-trust issues—its 30% cut is greedy, says TechCrunch.
The circumstances were bizarre. The sudden return, the backdrop of war, a shady banker and arms dealer as a sponsor. But it was Bobby Fischer! One could not believe it.
Global warming helped drive a rise in the intensity of extreme rain and snowfall across much of the Northern Hemisphere during the last half of the 20th century, a new study has found.
Washington policy wonks have been grappling with a subject that is more the province of poets and philosophers than bureaucrats: what is the value of a human life?
For many of the questions Watson got right on Jeopardy!, a naive Google query of the ‘en.wikipedia.org’ domain returned, as the first result, the correct answer.
Technology is eating jobs—and not just obvious ones like toll takers and phone operators. Lawyers and doctors are at risk as well. Is your job an endangered species?
The Congressional Budget Office projects that America’s 2011 deficit will be $1.5 trillion, or 9.8% of GDP, and debt held by the public in the 2011 fiscal year will approach 70% of GDP.
Hi everyone, If you type www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org into your browser, you’ll see that Dangerously Irrelevant has a new home! I’m now hosted at BigThink, which is dedicated to deep thinking on […]
From his many interviews with “minor geniuses,” Malcolm Gladwell distills a couple characteristics shared by all successful innovators.
Just how well computers are able to understand language nuance–what researchers call the “Paris Hilton” problem–will determine how far A.I. has come.
With tremendous improvements in energy efficiency, traditional buildings can be just as sustainable as buildings that flaunt their green-ness.
A buddy of mine called me the other day with awe in his voice and asked me if I knew that Hosni Mubarak was worth as much as Bill Gates. […]
True intimacy would be far more profound if we were all connected to each other by the Internet.
Sanaa University president,Khalid Tamim, has been removed from his post, according to reports in Yemen. News Yemen claims it has been trying to get a hold of him this morning […]
1. According to our really cool BIG THINK physicist, Michio Kaku, evolution has stopped for our species. 2. But that doesn’t mean we can’t change ourselves. 3. So, in the […]
Yesterday, Google announced their 2011 class of Science Communication Fellows. This year’s program focuses on climate change and I am excited to say that I was one of the selected […]
We’ve talked a lot about volcanoes in other parts of the world, but now we have two US volcanoes making some news (although neither because they’re having a large eruption): […]
After Mubarak who is the next Middle Eastern leader to go? Some people have been pointing to President Salih and Yemen, but experts on the country have been pouring cold […]
For the past four decades, tension between artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation—A.I. versus I.A.—has been at the heart of progress in computing science.
Do you want to have an affair? Noel Biderman is the chief executive officer of Avid Life Media, based in Toronto. “Monogamy, in my opinion, is a failed experiment,” he declares.
By the fall of 1861, Walt Whitman had come to believe he needed to do something for the war effort. His first act was to contribute a patriotic broadside in verse.
Alcohol’s sleepy effects have not gone unnoticed. Those who have had a night out drinking may know that booze can deepen nighttime sleep only to wake you up as the sun is rising.
Despite the vast amounts of computing and communication power in corporate hands, companies are only at the early stages of using I.T. to revamp business practices.
There are certain aspects of economic life, such as expensive hotel internet connections, which can only be explained when we grapple with the bounded nature of our brain.
There has been much talk about facebook and twitter revolutions in the Middle East, but given the internet’s rather low infiltration rate in Yemen – I think roughly 200,000 lines* […]