Philosopher David Edmonds lists the five books of philosophy that have figured most in his development as a moral thinker. Along the way, he explains when it may be OK to end a life.
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Back in February I shared my thoughts on Pearson and why I think they should target the market with their own tablet device. Back then the iPad 2 was still […]
Since 2009, when fMRI scans were introduced into a criminal trial for the first time, doctors and legal scholars have been trying to refine the scope of the medical tool’s usefulness.
Some psychologists say the definition of trauma needs refining to include the importance of post-trauma environments. In receptive and supportive environments, instances of PTSD drop.
To know where you’re heading, it helps to know where you’ve come from. And with the last grains of sand slipping through the hourglass, now is the perfect time to […]
Stanford University researchers have succeeded in making an ultra-flexible solar cell that can be peeled off a backing and applied to any surface.
Part 1 of this essay appeared yesterday. Part 3 (of 3) will appear tomorrow. Where Thomas Hardy seems to me primarily a pessimist, W. B. Yeats is an ironist. A […]
By 2015, Hyundai hopes to have its Connectivity Concept to a point where drivers can not only open their cars, but have their personal user content automatically loaded.
The US Army is requesting proposals for development of coatings and other substances that will absorb 99 percent of all light.
Gracenote, the company best known for cataloguing music data, is about to roll out a service that will enable displaying of commercials based on the viewer’s age, gender, income, and other publicly available information.
Flutter now offers its gesture-recognition technology through a Google Chrome extension that works on media sites like Netflix and Pandora.
In 1951, musical composer and overall art theorist John Cage (shown above) stepped into an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Touted as the quietest place on Earth, the anechoic chamber […]
So I’ve gotten several emails asking what I think about the idea talked up by the devoted Democratic professor Jonathan Zimmerman in the semi-iconoclastic Christian Science Monitor: affirmative action for conservatives […]
Planetary Resources isn’t the first company formed around the mission of extracting valuable metals from the asteroid belt, but it may be the first one with some real investor belief and funding behind it.
Comet ISON was first spotted well beyond Jupiter’s orbit, which makes it fairly large. If it makes it past the sun it could light up the night sky by this time next year.
My latest column is now up on AlterNet, There Are Now As Many Nonreligious Americans As Evangelicals — 6 Ways Politicians Can Court Their Vote. In it, I discuss the […]
Three years ago, on December 17, 2009, the Obama administration launched its first strike on what it believed to be an AQAP training camp in southern Yemen. Unfortunately, what the […]
In a mid-career essay about his elder contemporary Robert Frost, the poet W. H. Auden observes that “[Thomas] Hardy, [W. B.] Yeats and Frost have all written epitaphs for themselves.” […]
Last month, I posed a list of questions to people who identify as pro-life. In the long comment thread which ensued, there were a fair number of people who stepped […]
More should be done towards creating a resource file to help medical professionals evaluate whether the average person can handle space travel, say the authors of a new paper.
A newly published paper reveals that the rate at which temperatures are rising was greatly underestimated, and the results parallel those recently found in Greenland and other northern polar regions.
Launched last week, the game, called Clouds, is the newest addition to the Milky Way Project and to Zooniverse, which is home to some of the largest online citizen science endeavors.
The Taboos of Alan Moore, Conclusion The topic of sexuality and children elicits justifiably strong reactions. However, as with most strong emotions, it also leads to unjustified, often irrational, responses […]
You may have missed it, but on the Friday heading into the Christmas holiday, the FDA announced its decision about the safety of salmon genetically engineered to grow faster. After […]
Last month, I posed a list of questions to people who identify as pro-life. In the long comment thread which ensued, there were a fair number of people who stepped […]
It stands to reason that conservative parents would be more inclined to propagate the Santa myth, and not only because they tend to be more religious than liberals. Deception for […]
Yes, you get a Christmas post! Atheists don’t take the day off just because people think a mythological savior-god was born on this date thousands of years ago. So my […]
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 will include rules for how apps and social networks gather and use personal data from young users.
The company is testing a feature that will allow individuals can send messages to members outside of their friends network for a dollar per message.
Despite studies discrediting links between video games and gun violence, both industries have quietly benefited from product placement.