A spine chilling new documentary addresses the myriad of new tools for surveillance that are now being put to use in the the UK’s capital city. We learn of the […]
All Articles
With the Welsh measles epidemic only now beginning to slow I thought now would be a good time to repost Daryl Cunningham‘s fantastic explainer (below) on how we came to be in […]
With severe and potentially deadly weather continuing tonight in the central United States, an important reminder of what not to do from a post on last fall’s tornadoes in Oklahoma: […]
Proposed at this week’s D11 conference: A chip in the form of a daily pill that, when swallowed, turns a person’s body into an authentication token. Also offered: An electronic tattoo worn for a week at a time.
One widely useful mental habit that we teach in our class at the Center for Applied Rationality is called reference class forecasting, and it’s for the most part, in the literature, […]
While other European countries are up in arms over what they say are Google’s invasions of privacy, Lithuania is using Street View to uncover and go after citizens with unreported taxable assets, such as buildings and cars.
Over the past two weeks on BigThink, I’ve shared the first two of a three-part dialogue between myself and the Danish psychotherapist Ole Vadum Dahl (read part 1 and part […]
I became a writer after I read Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller when I was 22. I couldn’t believe somebody wrote that book.
Taking risks doesn’t mean being stupid. It really involves taking measured risks and really understanding how to mitigate those risks in one way or another.
Using raw images from NASA’s website, space nerd Karl Sanford constructed this short time-lapse video that features highlights of the Curiosity Rover’s visit to Mars.
Only about five percent of books are converted into usable formats for the visually impaired. A new treaty between publishers and advocates, designed to address copyright issues, may help end this “book famine.”
If you make conscious branding a higher purpose and you make it ingrained into your DNA, it’s not going to be a fad.
The human brain is a masterpiece of design, which enables us to focus very deeply on a subject.
It was actually “physics envy” that got us in trouble in the first place.
Make no mistake: the first powered SS1 launch was the catalyst that inspired hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout the world to follow their NewSpace dreams.
Writer Bill McKibben says that it doesn’t make sense to invest in companies “that make sure we won’t have a planet to retire on…Ask your [organizations] which side of this wager they’re taking.”
With the income gap at its highest in many years, several organizations are looking at what worked for the developing world and applying it to the richest country on Earth.
Modern cosmology, the understanding of our origin and evolution, can give us the understanding that we’re all in this together.
We’re at the end of an exponential expansion in resource use that began around 1800, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
This past Memorial Day weekend I visited my parents in Virginia. I live in Brooklyn, and their suburb of Washington, DC feels like being out in the country. It’s quiet, […]
Most of the successful companies over the last 30 or 40 years that define Silicon Valley actually spun out of major corporations. They were oldies.
I wish I could sketch well because it turns out that so many ideas start with images.
Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be passing Earth today at 4:59 p.m. Eastern, at a distance of 3.6 million miles, or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon.
A Harvard Business Review blog this week presents fascinating data on long work hours, and speculates on why men work so hard. They cite experts who note that long hours […]
Who says Russian oligarchs have bad taste? Dmitri Rybolovlev bought Donald Trump’s 33,000-square-foot Palm Beach mansion for $85 million in 2008, and the fertilizer mogul is now planning to tear it down.
The Miami-Dade Police have some explaining to do after a cell phone camera captured officers assaulting an unarmed 14-year old named Tremaine McMillan.
On May 24, 1813, just months after publishing Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen went to a show in search of her female hero. ”I dare say Mrs. D[arcy] will be […]
As we head out into the future we know that we can predict certain kinds of disruptive technologies.
Adaptability is going to be one of the most critical skills we can have in the future.
If you own Tesla’s Model S electric car, you can travel for free along well-traveled highways in North America by accessing strategically placed supercharge stations.