What is the Big Idea? Voters in Egypt went to the polls today for day two of the country’s presidential election. Kate Woodsome from Voice of America, Asia curated Tweets, Twitpics and […]
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What could it mean to say that the self is an illusion? Here’s Bruce Hood, author of the new book The Self Illusion, in an interview at Sam Harris’ joint: […]
We’ve all noticed it – on television and the social web, an increase in politically partisan polemic and cultural isolationism. This “us vs. them” mentality doesn’t reflect the best of America, past or present, says author and essayist Marilynne Robinson.
Call it art, experimental philosophy, theater, or what you will – Jonathan Keats plays the fool as a kind of public protest against the ever-present danger of taking ourselves and our understanding of the world too seriously.
By linking a single ion with a single proton, physicists at the University of Innsbruck have established the first quantum interface between quantum processors and optical information channels.
Jonathan Pryce is the complete actor, able to shape-shift, seemingly without effort, from a charming Mephistopheles (Mr. Dark in Something Wicked This Way Comes), to a hapless, heartbreaking everyman (Sam […]
First of all, I am not an analyst nor do I own any stock in any public company. The last time I did invest in a promising Internet company ended […]
Science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon discusses whether universal identification markers would make future wars less bloody by allowing soldiers to better identify innocent bystanders.
A new medical device developed by engineers at MIT can inject drugs into the body without using a needle. Benefits include improving patient compliance rates and preventing accidental pricks.
Like San Francisco’s iconic cable cars, a new system of cable trucks is set to be installed between the port of Long Beach and Los Angeles, cutting emissions by as much as 30%.
Art isn’t usually a life or death matter, but the controversy over South African artist Brett Murray’s The Spear (detail shown above) might end in bloodshed. When Murray decided to […]
It’s easy to see why, for most of human history, a creative insight was thought of as a divine spirit that came from “some distant and unknowable source, for distant […]
SpaceX’s successful rocket launch is the proof of concept not only for private space missions but for an entirely new economy based on taking individuals and businesses to and from space.
After SpaceX’s successful rocket launch, its founder is riding high. But the space visionary nearly went broke investing nearly all his money into the company after selling PayPal.
Big-idea start ups are not dead, says GigaOm’s Derrick Harris. They’ve just moved to the cloud, where scalable technology allows companies–and individuals–to innovate like never before.
Larger than the threat of global warming is feeding humanity’s ever-expanding population. Already, we use 40% of dry land on Earth to produce food. Are we simply running out of planet?
Today the Friends of Yemen met in Riyadh. One of the key issues, as it often is at these meetings, is that of foreign aid. Several days ago a group […]
The “great convergence” that began with the emergence of the Asian Tigers, accelerated with explosive growth in China and India, and continues today with numerous other countries spanning the globe—all within the past five decades or so—then it was far from preordained.
After being written off by a team of European astronomers, dark matter has made a surprise comeback thanks to the training and support of two researchers from New Jersey.
European scientists who want to begin experimenting with geoengineering are being met with a host of concerns, including those of philosophers who worry about manipulating nature.
An angelic lady from the pre-raphaelite school of femmes fatales is stretched across a map of Europe. Her raised hands clutch a sketch of the late-19th-century European rail network at two of […]
On Mother’s Day, in a sermon to his flock at the Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina, Pastor Charles Worley revealed his plan to rid America of its homosexuals: […]
As you may be aware, this past Sunday was Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, in which freethinkers are exhorted to draw pictures of Mohammed to reaffirm their right to free expression […]
The Boston Review is hosting a forum centered the claim of Michael Sandel, a Harvard political theorist, that “markets crowd out morals.” Sandel’s essay is well worth reading. He clearly gives voice to […]
With state and local governments still suffering from a persistent deficit of tax revenues due to the moribund economic recovery, smart politicians are looking ahead and lobbying for spaceport development […]
We’ve long been fascinated by the endless streams of data available in the world around us, and we especially love to try to make sense of them.
Are we somehow becoming “more than human”?
Kids, want to be an artist when you grow up? We’ve got a check-list for how to tell your parents. Parents, oh no, you accidentally raised an artist? Don’t despair: […]
Private company Space X successfully launched its unmanned Falcon 9 rocket into space early Tuesday morning from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Worldcrunch provided some fun facts […]
China has one billion mobile phone customers and in the next 12 months, 200 million people will purchase smartphones. That’s a big market for app developers, who also want better copyright protections.