If the Internet is understood as the democratization of information, then the print and TV news that preceded it was a fiefdom. In this fiefdom, feudal news producers condescended to […]
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Still miffed about the 2000 election? Or even the 1992 election? Steven Brams feels your pain—and has developed a system that could prevent similar voter aggravation in the future. As the […]
The French public is in uproar over a poster campaign to discourage young people from smoking which shows teenagers kneeling in front of a man, as if simulating oral sex.
Procrastinating at work on Twitter and Facebook might actually make us more productive and have positive benefits on our work and boost creativity, according to new research.
The number of US fatalities in the Afghanistan war is nearing 1,000, “a grim milestone”, more than eight years after the Taliban was toppled from power.
The Salon’s Laura Miller gives a word to the to wannabe writers – summarising the rules for writing fiction and advice from the point of view of a consumer rather than a fellow scribe.
The fossilised jawbone, teeth and scales of an enormous 10-meter predatory shark, which would have roamed the seas around 89m years ago, have been dug up in Kansas, USA.
Three Google, Inc. executives have been convicted on privacy charges by a Milan court for transmitting a video showing the bullying of a youth with Down’s syndrome.
After winning the unanimous backing of Latin America and the Caribbean in its claim to sovereignty over the Falklands Islands, Argentina is seeking a UN ruling over the row.
Dissent and unrest is rife across Europe as workers and activists from different countries strike and riot in rejection of government plans to cut spending and impose austerity policies.
Amid fears that the new Obama administration will impose tighter strictures on guns, gun rights activists are pushing their State governments to loosen gun laws.
Iran is planning to release “irrefutable evidence” that terrorist ringleader Abdolmalek Rigi was “aided and abetted” by the US government before his arrest, according to Press TV.
Why does sustainable transit seem like such a far-off dream? Ostensibly obstructed by years of costly R&D, unprecedented political and technological breakthrough, and often some sort of sci-fi revolution, the […]
After a long delay, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) released its report on whether the Bush administration lawyers who wrote the notorious memos justifying the use […]
As a genre, science fiction could potentially wield more influence over its followers than any other cultural force. Through film, television, and comics, it has inspired countless socially-awkward young people […]
Failing schools are everyone’s problem. In his Big Think interview this week, NYU sociologist and education reform champion Pedro Noguera provides clear, no-nonsense advice on how government, teachers’ unions, and […]
A controversial Christian “child training” practice has come under fire from other Christians who deem its processes “abusive” rather than disciplinarian.
Former vice president Dick Cheney has been hospitalised after experiencing chest pains, having previously had four heart attacks.
A Twitter typo served as inspiration for a super fast and convenient way of paying for goods online called Twitpay, invented by Alabama-based computer programmer Michael Ivey.
A regular system of 26 symbols thought to be the origins of written language crop up in stone carvings throughout the prehistoric world – now experts are trying to decipher their meaning.
The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn says the “rapid apologies” by Nato forces after the killing of Afghan civilians “show a significant political and military change in the Afghan war”.
A Texan mother was startled to find a severed snake’s head in a packet of frozen green beans while cooking for her family of four kids in Houston.
Investigation by a tenacious media organisation in Texas has exposed the shady circumstances by which the state gave away samples of hundreds of newborn babies’ blood.
An Afghan immigrant, Najibullah Zazi, 25, has pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to planning a suicide bomb attack on the city’s subway system.
Afghani Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Kabir has been “seized in Pakistan” according to American media reports which say he was picked up in the city of Nowshera.
The National Enquirer has another piece of scandalous news for its clamouring public – it hopes to win a Pulitzer Prize for its revelations about the private life of John Edwards.
The world’s coral reefs – which have been around for about 50,000 years – represent a critical treasure trove not only of Earth’s precious remaining biodiversity, but also of potential […]
In his piece in this week’s New Yorker on depression, and depression-related research, Louis Menand asks, “Is psychopharmacology evil, or is it useless?” Increasingly, skeptics say it’s the latter, and […]
Did an early mistake in Edward Hirsch’s life lead him to forge a career in poetry? “When I was eight years old my grandfather died…After he died I went down […]
“We may have democracy,” Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Justice Brandeis thought that […]