Once again, I’ve gotten enmeshed in a debate on Twitter. This time it wasn’t with a theist, but with two atheists, Daniel Loxton and Reed Esau. It started with these […]
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That’s the bold prediction of Kristian Hammond, an executive at Narrative Science, a company that translates data into natural language. He predicts a robot will win the Pulitzer in five years.
Despite predictions to the contrary, Intel has developed a new computer chip which fits more transistors into a smaller space. Computer power is still looking set to increase into the future.
There’s a universal truth in the online world. Scan the discussion pages of any article featuring the words Apple or Android and the comments page will be a battleground for […]
My latest column is now up on AlterNet, Apocalypse Soon: Why Are Christians So Obsessed With the End Times? In it, I trace the long and ignoble history of failed […]
As I’ve been writing about for the past several years, the key to public engagement on climate change is to tell personally relevant stories about the issue. An effective method […]
GPS technology is opening up exciting new hybrid forms of mapping and art. Or in this case: cycling, mapping and art. The maps on this page are the product of […]
Bryan Sykes is the author of DNA USA, which documents his journey across America, Easy Rider style, as he describes it, to record a genetic portrait of the nation. What […]
According to Dr. Mark Hyman, we’re at a watershed moment in science and medicine in which we need to learn how to change the environment around us in order to create the “best expression of our genes.”
While scientists jump to answer this notoriously difficult question, scientific observation is not well suited to finding the cosmic will that the question implies. This stumper is better left alone.
It’s commonplace to imagine the people of the period we know now as the High Renaissance, centered in Italy from the 1490s to the 1520s, looking at the works of […]
The NAO is a fully programmable, 57cm humanoid robot made by Alderaban Robotics. This cute robot contains a full array of body language, text and visual recognition, as well as […]
Pamela Haag: “Whenever I hear a headline like ‘Marriage Ruined by Cheating,’ I’m tempted to point to a divorce somewhere else and declare, ‘Marriage Ruined by Monogamy.’
While talk of mining near-Earth asteroids has concentrated on metals like gold and platinum, the real treasure may be mining water and using its hydrogen to propel ambitious space missions.
Throughout the history of our solar system, the sun’s proximity to exploding supernovae has had an important influence on the development of life on Earth, says a new study out of Denmark.
In 1962, the latest and greatest form of artificial illumination was invented; the light emitting diode (LED). In recent years, they have reached a level of illumination suitable for most applications of indoor lighting.
The private space company Sierra Nevada has designed a spacecraft to take the place of NASA’s recently retired shuttles, carrying astronauts to the ISS with greater efficiency.
As Silicon Valley startups race to develop the next generation of sophisticated, algorithmic marketing software, it’s instructive to note the success of Thinkmodo – a viral marketing firm that films all its videos on iphones, does no market testing, and doesn’t even mention the name of the product in its campaigns.
A new pair of buildings opened at NASA’s Ames Research Center use technology and design to create as much energy as they use, modeling what manned bases on other planets will look like.
Slate recently highlighted the fastest-growing industries in the USA – everything from hot sauce to self-tanning products to 3D printers to generic pharmaceuticals. Here’s one industry they missed: the recycled […]
Back in January, I wrote about Jessica Ahlquist’s court victory over an illegal “School Prayer” banner in her high school in Cranston, Rhode Island. That was almost the end of […]
Is there an economic story that explains the origin of marriage, the most-debated-of-all-institutions, as well as divorce?
Last week I asked readers to answer this single question: “What is democracy?” I asked this question — without consulting a dictionary or political science textbook — because I am […]
James Cameron, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Peter Diamandis aren’t afraid to fail. If these men were afraid, they wouldn’t be attempting the most ambitious private space exploration […]
The idea of creating mixed boards is gaining significant traction, due to several key global trends.
John Gray’s review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind is fun because Gray is vehemently opposed to almost everything, but he clearly thinks this is a pretty good book anyway. […]
A new venture called Planetary Resources plans to send a fleet of droids to space to prospect the most valuable near-Earth asteroids. The project will require billions of investment dollars but could yield a trillion dollar reward.
UPDATE: Steve Jobs famously said, “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” I wanted […]
Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet, is best known as the co-founder of Blue State Digital, the firm that built and managed Barack Obama’s online campaign for the presidency […]
To make a resume for how today’s bosses read them—quickly and mercilessly—you’ll need to learn about white space, dumb algorithms and lingerie. You should drop your photo, too.