Many things puzzled the British student, on exchange somewhere on the Continent: what people ate, how they dressed, why they drove on the right. But nothing more so than the […]
All Articles
“Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to […]
“Every day I live in mortal fear of offending someone.” An old friend of mine tells me this over dinner. He shouldn’t have to be afraid. He’s not bigoted or […]
How you can safely trick your mind into triggering a visual hallucination, using only math and neuroscience! “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of […]
According to urban legend, sports stars who appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated will subsequently experience bad luck. This seems counterintuitive but time and time again the Sports Illustrated […]
Scientists are widely known for their inclination to drone on about esoteric topics in a language of jargon. But every so often, they can surprise us with conciseness.
In the long term, a life-changing earthquake in America’s heartland is almost certainly inevitable.
The best thing you can do is to try to lock in place the resources necessary to sustain you through the startup phase, which is an extraordinarily risky moment.
Robert Bruner: This third wave that I am witnessing is stemming out of computing power and digital communication technology combined with globalization, liberalization of trade and big demographic shifts, immigration and the like.
“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.”- General Douglas MacArthur (born on this date in 1880)
James Watson: Up until now, machines have made our lives a lot better. I don’t thing they’ve depersonalized us so far.
When we look across the Universe, we find that things used to be closer together in the past. So how large do things appear when they’re very far away? “Life is […]
James Watson: If people had a longer life, human beings would progress more slowly.
James Watson: I think we’re all in favor of being alive when we’re alive. And of course, it’s how you define being alive.
An experimental device has been unveiled in a paper in the journal Nature that promises to be able to keep accurate time for the next 5 billion years.
Supernova SN 2014J is one of the closest to be seen in recent decades and is now the brightest part of M82 and visible in small telescopes in the evening sky.
Stephen Hawking has proposed a breakthrough theory in a new paper – the idea that black holes can exist without an event horizon.
Yesterday the first instalment of a promising new documentary tackling conspiracy theories was published. Kirby Ferguson, creator of the rather fabulous documentary: Everything is a Remix, funded the documentary on Kickstarter and […]
Kirk Johnson: It was an amazing discovery that we’re all related, but it was not obvious. It’s not obvious that I’m related to a strawberry.
“I don’t believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.”- Virginia Woolf (born on this date in 1882)
“If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.”- Edith Wharton
The stars, gas and dust of our own galaxy dominates our night sky. But what secrets does the Universe hold beyond that? “Who are we? We find that we live on […]
This map shows that your chances of rising above your birth class vary tremendously depending on where you live.
Good versus Evil will always be the stock and trade of storytelling, especially in comic books. The skill of separating good guys from bad comes early to readers, with the […]
100 years ago, we thought the Milky Way was the full extent of the Universe, containing everything. Now, we know we’re just one of many. But how many? “The human mind […]
The light from an exploding star in the Messier 82 (aka “Cigar”) galaxy was first photographed from Earth on January 22nd, 2013.
To enter adulthood, your brain needs to remodel itself to handle the unsafe and the uncertain.
Daniel Altman: The power of mobility has diminished enormously, because these days it’s much harder to close the gap with the highest earners. Thanks to rising inequality, the same level of mobility just can’t make as much difference anymore.
Given all the stars, galaxies and what we know about the laws governing reality, how many planets are there in our observable Universe? “Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as […]
During the age of colonialism, Western powers conquered the people of Asia and objectified their women. This is well documented in literature, film, and scholarship: Here the dominant, masculine West; […]