If you ask anyone who knows me, I like to think they’d tell you that I’m a generally optimistic and cheerful person. But these past few weeks, I’ve felt like […]
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OK, so I thought I was alone in this, and that it was due to incipient neural disorders or too many drugs back in the 80s, but no: It turns […]
A new digital camera out of Duke University is set to change the way we take and use photographs, surpassing the limits of human biology and expanding on nature’s power.
Let’s face a sad truth: To be a book lover in the 21st century is a hard task. In the world of the knowledge economy and of constantly being plugged […]
A new tactile sensor developed at the University of Southern California is more sensitive to the touch than an actual human fingertip. The technology will help advance prostheses and AI.
Glenn Reynolds, one of America’s leading bloggers at Instapundit, has written a very short and accessible book called The Higher Education Bubble. My review amounts to this: It has all […]
When visiting the official Google blog today I learnt about their new Endangered Languages Project. It might sound a little funny that a company who is largely benefiting from English […]
With Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley well-established, Jeff Slobotski believes that cities like Omaha, Des Moines and Kansas City may form the backbone of a new generation of tech start ups.
People are not talking enough about The Bridge of San Luis Rey. No question, it’s a well-respected novel: it won the Pulitzer in 1928 and came in at #37 on […]
Bradley doesn’t tell you how you can be better, he doesn’t tell you how you can be like him. His approach to team leadership is a combination of empathy, encouragement, and inclusiveness.
Antonin Scalia died February 13, 2016, a day before Valentine’s Day. The conservative darling defended your right to abstain from broccoli and from health insurance, but he won’t stand up for your right to pleasure yourself.
One of the interesting developments in the Asian start-up scene over the last year has been the invasion of Western venture capital firms. Someone has obviously predicted that Asian tech […]
Madrid, Spain, has become the first city to integrate smart pavement into its infrastructure. The technology will offer citizens improved Web access while collecting data on pedestrian flow.
Physicists at the Israel Institute of Technology are working on a new structure that could bring the popular science fiction device to real-world situations such as the operating room.
Right after my recent post on “psychopunditry,” I came across signs of this kerfuffle between the writer Jonah Lehrer and the psychologist Christopher Chabris (not to be confused with this […]
We may have heard about one notable religious conversion this week, but in the more than ten years I’ve been writing about atheism (yes, it’s been that long!), I’ve found […]
Can the human mind be explained as a solely material thing? Can a machine ever be conscious?
Scientists from Harvard, Caltech, and the Max Planck Institute have succeeded in keeping a bit of quantum information, or qubit, stable in an artificial diamond for more than a second.
The next housing boom will be far more radical than the last housing boom. Instead of moving middle-class families into McMansions they can’t possibly afford, this next housing boom will […]
Interview with Jason Silva by Frank Rose One afternoon recently I spent a couple of hours with Jason Silva, the longtime Current TV host who’s been making much-talked-about micro-videos about the […]
The European Space Agency has committed to building a new space telescope whose sole purpose will be to unravel the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
Two European physicists are attempting to explain black holes in the language of quantum mechanics. If successful, they could reconcile competing theories of how gravity works.
It’s difficult to categorize Siri Hustvedt. She is, first and foremost, a writer and a thinker. Her well-known novels include What I Loved and The Sorrows Of An American. They […]
Tropical lakes of methane recently discovered on the surface of Titan hint at subsurface oases, which could produce compounds analogous to proteins and information-carrying molecules.
The Turing Test, which is based on language processing, is seen by many as imperfect. That is why a group of scientists at the University of Exeter in England have proposed a “Turing Test 2.0.”
China has become just the third nation to dock spacecraft in orbit. The country’s progress in space technology has been rapid despite being excluded from the International Space Station.
As paralysis continues to grip the corridors of power in Brussels and Berlin, even the dark humour for which central Europeans are noted is in short supply. But at least, […]
In this Age of the Austerians, anything considered non-essential is being denied the financial means to survive. Despite mountains of research findings, arts programs in schools fall under the austerity […]
I had a run-in with an old adversary lately, and after I’ve sent him on his way, I always feel compelled to point out some of the hopeful things he […]
Feeling threatened changes people’s perceptions of other people. Before World War II, for example, American university students described the Japanese as artistic and progressive, while the Chinese were supposedly treacherous […]