While there are many ways to heat your home during the winter months, here’s one you probably haven’t thought of yet: using heat generated by computer servers. In a conceptual […]
All Articles
Compare the covers of the different editions of the latest issue of Time. In most of the world, the cover of the magazine features a striking image of an Egyptian […]
Oh how I wish David Foster Wallace had been my English professor. The University of Texas has recently posted the syllabus from the English 102 class he taught at Pomona […]
As a general rule, I’m a fan of changing human behavior by changing the rules we live by. Given how inconsistent people are, it seems to me foolish to rely […]
Who’s right? Digital optimists who view the internet and social media as democratizing political forces, or pessimists who claim that they dumb down political discourse and polarize the electorate?
–Guest post by Sarah Merritt, American University doctoral student. News attention to climate change appears to follow a narrative cycle, where according to communication researchers Katherine McComas and James Shanahan […]
Economic growth is a tough thing to control if the tools you’re using only deal with one part of the economy. The problem is that when you push on one […]
Google-funded research shows America’s potential for extracting geothermal energy is huge, but that harvesting it could cost a lot and even cause small earthquakes in the process.
The rare woods used to make the world’s best guitars may be running short. Companies are experimenting with innovative ways to use their ever-dwindling supplies of prized timber.
Harnessing sunlight in space could provide effectively limitless amounts of power without the resource limitations or environmental impacts of alternatives like fossil fuels.
New climate data taken from the peak of the last ice age suggests the Earth may be more resistant to carbon dioxide than previously thought. But there remains some ambiguity.
In the midst of the economic downturn, designer Sandra Garratt wanted to do something hopeful. So she integrated solar panels into her clothing designs to make green tech fashionable.
You may have heard that another atheist billboard campaign has been censored, this time in Ohio. The Mid-Ohio Atheists had spent several weeks coordinating with the billboard company, planning locations […]
The great promise of the Internet has always been the ability to create truly “frictionless” markets, where buyers and sellers, producers and consumers, are able to do business directly with […]
Following Julian Sanchez‘s lead, I’ve argued that now that the Occupy movement has succeeded in shining a spotlight on its primary concerns — rising inequality, political corruption, and debt peonage […]
From an evolutionary perspective, our quickness to judge faces certainly makes sense. We need to know if someone is friend or foe, if he is strong or weak, if we can trust him or not. And we need to know quickly, before something bad happens. But is that quickness still as good when it determines national political outcomes?
{EAV:e47b9f8ac33e6b9b}Last summer I was invited to President Obama’s Twitter Townhall at the White House along with 139 other characters. Despite the grandiose setting and President Obama opening the event with […]
–Guest post by American University graduate student Laila Yette. Through the use of sites like Facebook and Twitter, President Obama’s 2008 campaign changed the way that we view social media […]
The blistering opinion rendered by Judge Jed Rakoff in the matter of the S.E.C. v. Citigroup Global Markets got very little attention yesterday in the midst of all the hoopla […]
If a public stock offering went ahead, some say Facebook would use the cash for more acquisitions and refine or work on new projects, such as a Facebook phone or netbook.
Amid growing concerns about the psychological impact of widespread digital ‘enhancement’ of photos comes a new tool to reveal how much fashion and beauty pics have been altered.
Are today’s climate change deniers waging a war on science? A new book by James Lawrence Powell spills the dirt on the new war on science.
–Guest by Audrey Payne, American University graduate student. It seems like there are so many problems discussed in the media every day- public health, the environment, the economy, political protests…. […]
Responding to privacy concerns, the European Commission plans to crackdown on Facebook allowing users’ most personal information to be used to create bespoke advertising.
If your product doesn’t need to be touched or demonstrated and is relatively small, your retail footprint is going to shrink. Bad news for retail clerks but exciting for entrepreneurs.
because it could become easier to sell products in places that you couldn’t previously.Retail is going to shrink and proliferate.
We’ve had the industrial revolution, and now we’re amid the data revolution. ‘Big data’ is a tectonic shift that will continue to affect many things we do for decades to come.
One of the odder cultural moments of the late 1970s that still sticks with me is the cinematic tour de force titled The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, the improbably story […]
Mapping the many paths from fully bearded to clean-shaven
In his Floating University lecture, Dr. Jeffrey Brenzel shows how our intellectual history is the story of rediscovering old ideas, and how these ideas will help you address permanent aspects of the human condition.
A couple of years ago Steven Landsburg controversially argued that if we want STI rates to fall then what is needed is more people participating in casual sex. As counter-intuitive […]