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It is no secret that the late rock musician Kurt Cobain felt alienated growing up. But a recently released animated video, which illustrates a lost interview he gave in 1993, reveals surprising insights about the rage he felt as a teenager and how he came to express it in punk rock. 

Dr. Pattberg explains why certain Chinese words are mandatory for global citizenship. 

Public health campaigns have been ineffective. So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation issued a grand challenge to design “a next-generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure.”

My students looked a little funny this morning. Nails were brighter, curls were bouncier, rumples were sparser and a few young men even sported ties. Today was senior portrait day, […]

The FCC is considering a proposal that would allow “airborne calls and cellular data use by passengers once a flight reaches 10,000 feet,” while maintaining restrictions during takeoff and landing.

Have we already reached peak car? This is the term that urban planners are using to describe the decline in vehicle miles traveled per person. 

We are so conditioned to relating to others in adversarial terms that we seldom think of how futile that is as an everyday code of conduct. 

      I just read an alarming piece on what the world will look like, possibly soon, when the efficacy of our current arsenal of antibiotics really starts to fade. There […]

An oyster reef costs about the same amount of money – $1 million per mile – as a seawall. But when you consider other factors outside of cost, the oyster reef wins by a mile.  

When I say “visual communications,” you might think I’m referring to video conferencing, which has been around for a long time and is most often used by executives in large […]

For younger Americans, the President might very well be most vividly remembered for the way he died.

In 2014, voters in Switzerland will decide whether their country should send a monthly check for $2,800 to every Swiss citizen and legal resident. This idea may never fly in […]

The mission would have to take advantage of next alignment of Earth and Mars, which occurs in 2017. Miss that window and we’ll have to wait another 15 years to take advantage of the orbital dynamics of the planets, which significantly reduce the distance and cost of the trip. 

While harkening back to our hunter-gather ancestors may be good nutrition, it’s not necessarily good thinking. 

Early humans lived in a world that one evolutionary geneticist compared to the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings. Not only were there many hominid populations, but these populations interbred, contributing to the genetic diversity of modern humans.

This image is an artist’s illustration of the 4U1630-47 star system featuring powerful jets emanating from a black hole candidate that is just a few times the mass of our sun. So what type of matter is contained in these jets?  

Neuroscientist Christof Koch proposes that consciousness is to be found in complex systems all around us. Therefore a dog, or a smaller animal like an earthworm, or even the Internet, all possess consciousness. 

You need to make a decision about how much thought and anxiety you’re going to invest in an attempt to prolong your life, which may be thwarted by the normal contingencies of human history.  

This week we mark the loss half a century ago of President John F. Kennedy. For that generation, Kennedy’s death was the “where were you” moment. For our generation, the […]

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” -Abraham Lincoln

What they’re able to identify by datafing text is that references to the one painter Marc Chagall, in the German language, went dark between 1933 and 1945.  He was Jewish.   The world leaves a trace.  And the trace is data. 

If you filled out a form today, you were probably asked your “gender.” I’m always tempted to answer “mannish,” or “girlie.” This isn’t what the form wants to know. Frequently […]

Lasting power is accorded to only a handful of presidents, especially after their death. There is no doubt that John Kennedy is one of the few. How did it happen?

So as semiconductor manufacturing has moved offshore, the number of people in this country who actually know how to operate those tools, who have the tacit knowledge has declined as well. 

Raghava KK: When I have children I’m going to promise to bias them with as many perspectives as possible as opposed to just biasing them with my little understanding of the world. 

Joel Primack: We’re about to cross a threshold “and have a complete understanding of the origin and the evolution of the universe.”

Hal Gregersen: Four-year-olds everywhere in the world are successful innovators. They ask lots of questions.  They observe like anthropologists.  And that means everyone – you and I – we have more creative capacity than we think.   

I’ve just gotten around to reading closely Marilynne Robinson’s most recent collection of essays—When I Was a Child I Read Books.  Robinson, maybe our best novelist, is a challenging writer.  […]

China is a manufacturing powerhouse. However, the middle kingdom has a new manufacturing challenge – can it produce enough children to change a demographic destiny that may threaten its future […]

Chip Wilson is the yoga world’s Rob Ford. While the Lululemon founder has not been caught smoking crack, it seems that whatever comes out of his mouth sends him further […]