While government agencies have a lot on their plates, says national security advisor Tino Cuéllar, they don’t have to be like Kafka’s The Castle. He recommends honest self-scrutiny and smart appropriation of outside ideas.
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A new report compiled by nearly 400 scientists from 48 countries explains how climate change may have influenced certain individual weather events this year, from droughts to heat waves.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider will now attempt to create individual particles of dark matter. Meanwhile, University of Michigan scientists have observed new threads of the mysterious stuff.
MIT theoretical physicists are working to carry the structure of crystals, such as table salt, into the fourth dimension of time. The result could be a computer than runs infinitely into the future.
Beyond the esoteric physical findings of the Large Hadron Collider, discovering evidence of the Higgs boson represents a milestone for human reason and is, more generally, a celebration of life.
Last night I heard Fred Guterl talk about his cheery new book, The Fate of the Species, which describes various ways we could do ourselves in, including heating up the […]
We’ve survived fire and flood! The Reason Rally in March was a day of gusty cold and battering rain. This July 4 weekend we went to the opposite extreme, as […]
“How do Americans spend their leisure time?” That question was posed by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom in his 2010 book How Pleasure Works. The answer, Bloom says, is “participating in […]
When most venture capitalist firms decide to invest, they’ve done months of meticulous research. Bucking the trend, Correlation Ventures has created predictive software to help.
We’re a fat nation for the simple reason that we hate bodies.
The barriers between the digital world and our physical existence continue to fall but our language lacks the necessary vocabulary to describe the new reality that is emerging.
Every few months, it seems, we are given new reasons why the Internet is an all-encompassing vice or, alternately, society’s savior. But what really matters is how we use it.
The summer is in full swing. School leaders around the country had big plans for this summer. Many walked into June saying, “This is the summer that I will do […]
That the average corporate employee sends and receives 105 emails per day is proof that our emailing habits are out of control. The medium causes us stress, say workplace researchers.
A new Congressional inquiry has found that 1.3 million requests were made by law enforcement officials last year for cellphone subscriber information, including geo-location information.
Human behavior is controlled by a lot of neural wiring and chemistry, and an incredible range of cognitive shortcuts and instincts, over which we have practically no conscious control. A […]
“Follow the Money,” the informant known only as “Deep Throat” told Woodward and Bernstein during their investigation into the Watergate Scandal that they titled All the President’s Men. Follow the […]
http://bigthink.com/dollars-and-sex/why-were-still-single-part-i
What is the Big Idea? The LIBOR scandal may be breaking now, but industry insiders told The Economist that the rate fixing goes back much further than that. “Fifteen years […]
Boston, with its rich university resources and innovative start up incubators, stands to have the smartest creativity infrastructure in the world outside of Silicon Valley, says Dr. Boyd Cohen.
Will the natural gas boom revitalize the U.S. economy and provide us energy for 100 years?
Market-based reforms are helping to create a service and manufacturing-based African middle class. As a result, populations are more likely to demand fairer government rule.
World leaders have pledged $16 billion in foreign aid over the next four years, but observers say past money has been poorly spent and that many businesses don’t even have electricity.
Notre Dame moral philosopher Gary Gutting asks whether, morally speaking, an American president could acquiesce to another country’s policies that harm US citizens in the name of some greater good.
Technology has fomented a new global protest movement, spanning from the Middle East to the West. But the ease of online activism also threatens any lasting power groups can gain.
A Q&A With Dr. John L. Casti, author, X-Events: The Collapse of Everything Dr. John L. Casti is a complexity scientist. This is one of those job descriptions I would […]
I’m home again, safe and sound. As I mentioned, this weekend I was in Columbus, Ohio at the 2012 Secular Student Alliance Leadership Conference, having a blast with some of […]
By understanding what causes shifts in how we experience consciousness, neuroscientists will be able to understand more fully what underpins our connection to the external world.
The omnipresence of instantaneous technology has made us more likely to make snap decisions and judgements, often with bad consequences. Scientists have found a solution, though.