Nine months into Syria’s uprising and the peaceful protests against the regime of Bashar Assad are now accompanied by a growing insurgency.
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Will the conflict between intellectual property and the value of sharing knowledge be resolved?
The Tahirih Justice Center is one of the U.S.’s foremost legal defense organizations for immigrant women and girls fleeing human rights abuses such as domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, […]
Kim Jong-un’s youth means he’s likely to keep his head down for a few years while North Korea is run by elder statesmen. Stability is expected to ensue, which China will welcome.
Withdrawing the troops from Iran is about the only truly popular thing Obama has done in the last two years. But many still think the invasion was the right decision.
Europe is falling apart, and a frustrated international community appears unwilling to lend Beijing a hand. China’s problems are still manageable, but they require strong leadership.
Along with Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa, the former Czech Republic president and leader of the Velvet Revolution was seen as an emblem of democracy for millions worldwide.
Scientists have found a fascinating pattern: children better at combining sights and sounds tend to score higher on intelligence tests. Ability to compute conflicting information is key.
Research shows that too few or too many adverse experiences generally leave people with worse coping skills than those who have had ‘the optimum’ number of bad times.
In top news this week, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And in other news: • A paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine finds that the […]
As we are rapidly getting closer to the end of 2011 which has been quite an exciting year for the education startup scene, I want to take a quick look […]
Freelance writer and editor Molly Oswaks on how first cocaine and later an ADD diagnosis and medication gave her clarity and attention consistency after a life mostly spent adrift.
The Descendants is the most critically acclaimed film in the theatres right now. I’m not sure I know quite why. Well, one reason is the excellent track record of its […]
A systematic review has shown that psychological interventions to prevent depression in children and adolescents have protective effects that last for up to a year.
A new procedure that involves inserting electrodes into the brain shows promise in reducing seizures for people with epilepsy, thereby improving their quality of life.
The announcement this week that two groups of scientists have narrowed the search for the elusive Higgs Boson made headlines around the world. Next year, physicists actually hope to find […]
This piece was originally published on AlterNet. When America was founded, it was the first modern nation to throw off the rule of absolute monarchy and prove that democracy was […]
Most atheist writers in America have encountered the phenomenon of “fatwa envy“, where Christian apologists sneer that we wouldn’t dare criticize Islam in the same way we criticize Christianity. (This […]
My latest article has been posted on AlterNet, How We All Pay For the Huge Tax Privileges Granted to Religion — It’s Time to Tax the Church. In it, I […]
In a watershed moment for chimpanzee research, the US Institute of Medicine says “most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary.”
A recent two-year trial of telehealth technology for monitoring people who are chronically ill found it works particularly well for people with conditions like diabetes and heart failure.
There is no question that in many cases, we are cancer phobic, more afraid of the disease than the medical evidence says we need to be, and that fear alone can be bad for our health.
ABA, a time-intensive autism treatment called applied behavior analysis, has wide support and is now a profitable business. But the jury is still out on its effectiveness.
Christopher Hitchens and Steve Jobs were among the first patients to benefit from very new technology using DNA sequencing to pick the cancer drugs likely to be most effective.
Telling people how much exercise they’d need to do to burn up the calories in junk food is a much more effective deterrent than telling them the calorie count, researchers have found.
Christopher Hitchens has died. I never personally met the man, but I want to say a few words in tribute. Of all the popular figures commonly styled as the New […]
Imagine you’re an expert on some famous artist. Now imagine someone comes to you with a painting they believe is by that famous artist. After looking at the painting, you […]
The fierce moralist and political writer has died of oesophageal cancer and the outpouring of remorse at his loss is as varied as the arguments he made during his life. A fond farewell, Hitch.
Washington political analyst and author of Primary Colors, Joe Klein is back with his yearly awards for courageous politicians. Some you’ve heard of, some you probably haven’t.
America needs to make the dollars it spends on higher education work more efficiently.