David Brooks’s recent love letter to Christopher Hitchens called (respectfully) only glancing attention to the celebrated author’s current battle with cancer; instead, Brooks focused on how important Hitchens is to […]
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Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku, who writes the Dr. Kaku’s Universe blog for Big Think, is appearing on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” tonight at 11:30 to talk about […]
Recently we wrote about emerging models for Research (the “R” in R&D) and how the US government can encourage and support them. But what about Development – the “D” in R&D? […]
The Fourth of July is one of our most patriotic holidays. The famous portrait of Revolutionary era soldiers marching with fife and drum is one of its most recognized symbols, […]
Murdoch is putting up paywalls and Jobs is censoring risqué apps. Have we reached the limits of free information exchange that everyone predicted from the Internet? What’s coming next?
The novels of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, along with relics of Victorian technology, have inspired a new cult following called “Steampunk.” The group celebrates the Victorian spirit.
Just give money to the poor, says a new book by the same name. In it, three British professors say direct cash payments to the developing world’s poor will help economies to grow.
“The letters of Pliny the Younger provide gripping insight into Roman life — and the last hours of a city.” Michael Dirda reviews the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.
“What’s so bad about deflation?” asks Slate. “After all, it’s a pleasant surprise when prices of many items fall.” As it turns out, there is good deflation and bad deflation, but which is which?
Documentation made during the late 1960s of how one liberal German after-school center attempted to teach sexual liberation demonstrates the thin line between freedom and abuse.
Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, can envision only breakdown in Afghanistan: Congress has divergent goals and counter-insurgency tactics are insufficient.
“We love them, of course, but new research suggests that having children makes us unhappy — it’s just that none of us feels able to admit it.” The Independent researches a taboo issue.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, made assumptions quite different from Stephen Hawking’s dire warnings about aggressive alien life. Should we keep looking?
Matthias Ringmann, a minor scholar and cartographer working in landlocked Eastern France, was responsible for putting America on the map, literally. History, however, has since forgotten him.
When I was a kid, I found myself glued to the television whenever a moon landing took place. Even when others grew jaded by repeated landings, I never lost sight […]
The Fourth of July fireworks I have gone to for years have been canceled. Oakland is hosting a bunch of other Independence Day activities in Jack London Square—they’ll have some […]
Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, and Anne Tamar-Mattis made headlines this week with a post on Bioethics Forum entitled “Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb?” The headline made […]
Elegance does not derive from abundance, the German architect Ludwig Mies once said. In our time of coming financial austerity, could this pre-WWII phrase make a comeback?
The New Statesman interviews the Kenyan native and friend of Western conservatives who warns that Islam gets a free pass while carrying a dangerous blend of oppressive ideas.
China’s resource hungry economy is importing more and more from the Americas. How will its entrance into a region historically dominated by the U.S. affect Latin and South America?
In a scientific experiment, men selected women with small feet and long thighs as the most attractive, while women selected men with small wrists. Evolutionary success could explain their choices.
A baby’s first smiles are not likely an expression of inner emotion but “first smiles teach infants the positive associations attached to a smile that we adults already feel,” says one professor of psychology.
Not a recluse in her personal life, before the rights to her poems created feuds between her close associates, the poet’s life was complicated by a love triangle she initiated with a married man.
Would an xxx. domain for pornography make the industry easier to filter or would it simply increase the amount of explicit material available on the Web? And what does Steve Jobs want?
The Internet is a double edged sword for small retailers, says The Economist, providing a wider audience for niche products while giving big advantage to companies with economies of scale.
Naomi Wolf likes shopping for clothes too, but she knows brutal labor conditions lurk behind each inexpensive blouse. She calls on Western women to be more aware of cheap fashion’s true cost.
July 3rd marks an equally important day for American independence, says Walter Rodgers, recalling how the Union’s Civil War victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg presaged the modern state.
Leave it to a comic book icon to cause a flag-related stir as the 4th of July weekend approaches. Wonder Woman, everyone’s favorite 69-year-old Amazon, celebrated the 600th issue of […]
“Watching television has been a sort of half-time job for every man, woman, and child in the developed world for, you know, for decades now,” says NYU Interactive Telecommunications Professor […]
Thanks to the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s runaway hit, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” we tend to think of undercover operative agents as not only being uncommonly good looking but […]