A German court has effectively criminalized male circumcision, and while the ruling is not binding on any other body, debate over religious and individual freedom has erupted.
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What’s the Big Idea? Ever wonder how Michael Jordan came to be the best basketball player that ever lived? Unlike the stories we hear of many world champions who set […]
The pace of Chinese economic growth is slowing and wages are increasing. As the economy matures, transitioning to service industries and importing more goods, the West stands to gain.
By Peadar Coyle It is said that education is something people have strong opinions about. A growing literature has emerged around randomized evaluations of interventions, most notably Esther Duflo’s work on […]
You know you’ve made the big time when you rate a Google Doodle, as Gustav Klimt did this past weekend in recognition of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Anyone […]
It’s France, 1785. An Englishman offers a surgeon money to perform a pretty standard operation: leg amputation. However, for the surgeon, there is no good medical reason to do so, […]
Entrepreneurship is booming: we can see it in all the startup accelerators, incubators, and hackathons filling up and expanding around the world. But for every success story there are hundreds […]
Back in April, after Romney had pulled ahead of his GOP presidential competitors for good, I wrote about Romney’s penchant, a la Donald Trump and other mega millionaires, to reframe […]
Over the past few posts here at Dollars and Sex, we have been talking about two behaviors that online dating sites encourage that make finding a mate more difficult – […]
Scientists argue the courtroom is a bad place for brain scans to serve as evidence because they cannot assess the full guilt of an individual. Other developments are changing how we think of justice.
[Author’s Note: In keeping with the tradition that whenever you have a blog post whose title is a question, the answer is always “no”…] Of all the essays I’ve written, […]
Previously thought to be simply the glue binding the brain’s neurons, glial cells have proven an important regulator of THC and therefore an important part of how conscious memory works.
The nation’s leading criminologist warns that rising global temperature seed the ground for crime. Threats to livelyhood and large-scale migrations help create deprivation and discrimination.
While attending the 2012 SSA convention, I had some thoughts about the future of the secular movement and what shape it will likely take in the coming years. As atheism […]
Researchers have found that adolescents who actively search for a personal identity are more likely to describe themselves in consistent and positive terms, reinforcing their values.
For college grads entering a thinner job market saddled with debt and older adults trying to return to the workplace after a long hiatus, training yourself to be optimistic could only help.
Sometimes what political science tells us is that we should pay less attention to politics. It’s easy to get caught up in the horse race aspect of the presidential election, […]
Will humans ever run 100 meters in under 9 seconds? Usain Bolt is the world’s best opportunity yet to see just how far our biological limits can be bent by training and nutrition.
Harvard medical researchers have discovered how some cancer cells develop resistance to targeted therapy treatments. The study concludes that a one-drug approach is insufficient.
A rare mutation on a gene long associated with Alzheimer’s seems to prevent the disease from forming. Scientists want to make a drug that mimics the specific mutation.
While eugenics is most certainly morally dubious, it simply does not work at a practical level. Any strategy to decrease genetic diversity in humans would make us less able to survive change.
The controversial biologist Craig Venter believes his team of scientists will create synthetic life within a year. Venter says the Earth’s booming population depends on such advancements.
My latest article has just been posted on AlterNet, The Biggest Threats We Face From Conservative Religion. It’s a substantial excerpt from chapter 1 of my new book, and is […]
On Woody Guthrie’s 100th birthday, writer and musician Henry Rollins’ reflections on the power – and limitations – of music.
Judging by the abundance of “guilty pleasure” TV shows, many people in America seem to feel overly constrained by the norms of public civility. The expectations of reasonableness and respect […]
The tight squeeze in science funding means the best are forced to be even better. In an economic downturn, it’s like that across industries, but in no other area do […]
Reductionists believe that memories, emotions, and feelings can be broken down to nothing more than interactions between brain cells and their associated molecules. In other words, “you” are your brain.
In an op-ed in the New York Times last week, Arthur C. Brooks tried to account for data showing that conservatives tend to be happier than liberals. Brooks began by […]
Charles Rubin is dubious about all the enthusiasm that comes with thinking “exponentially.” Today’s suggestion is that the coming Singularity will remove the limits placed on individual lives by biology, […]
Despite the triumph of the individual in Western culture, society still determines what love is and how it can be gotten. Unfortunately, our modern view of love is set up to cause us pain.