A renegade teacher tells the students at the school straight out, much earlier than they were supposed to know, what their purpose in life is, claiming that knowing what one’s life is […]
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Chef Wylie Dufresne believes in playing with his food—but not in the usual sense of the phrase. In his popular New York restaurant, wd-50, Dufresne applies molecular gastronomy, a field […]
James Taranto has a strange op/ed in the Wall Street Journal accusing feminists of being hypocrites for defending Anthony Weiner, the liberal Democratic congressman who inadvertently exposed his boxer-brief-clad crotch […]
A kind of religion has developed around so-called “natural” foods. Hold on, says modernist chef and inventer Nathan Myhrvold. Do you like muffins? Do you like wine and cheese? If so, read on.
I’m nonplussed by Mary Elizabeth Williams’ comment today, over at Salon, that Anthony Weiner’s impending fatherhood “drastically changed” the Weinergate drama. Not that I disagree that “the timing of Weiner’s […]
When French-American artist Louise Bourgeois passed away in May 2010, most remembered her as the “Spider Woman” thanks to her Maman series—giant metal spiders scattered all over the world in […]
One of the things that I find most frustrating is reading articles or comments on AQAP by people who have never bothered to actually read what the organization itself puts […]
A number of responses to my post on mental illness and civil rights deserve some further thought. A number of people have pointed to the variance in definitions of mental […]
It has been a busy week for me – and I think I’ve alluded to why – and this is likely my last live post until June 21. Look for […]
Post 9/11 airport security has caused comic levels of hassle for almost a decade, but the ‘Checkpoint of the Future’ will make flying the tolerable, dignified activity we all remember.
Hoping to exploit public skepticism over the banking system, a bunch of libertarians and internet geeks are hoping to disrupt our cash system with an online currency called Bitcoin.
Three upcoming events worth noting… ISTE The annual ISTE conference is right around the corner. Over 13,000 people attended last year, along with 456 vendors. The annual goal is to […]
Nanotechnology is set to drive a revolution in ‘intelligent avionics’ by using ‘smart dust’ that will help cut aircraft fuel burn and improve safety and communication, says Dan Thisdell.
M.I.T. researchers have created a new battery prototype that promises to be more efficient than existing car batteries by using electro-chemical fuel that, once spent, can be recharged.
The past few weeks have seen two developments that show that we’re on the verge of home 3-D printing really breaking out into the mainstream, says Forbes’ Alex Knapp.
It’s not Dr. Seuss. But Go the F*** to Sleep is extremely powerful, and it’s extremely powerful for an audience who has supported and stomached and loved and memorized-to-the-point-of-loving-slightly-less the […]
“Resist what resists in you,” the god Krishna tells heroic Arjuna in Peter Brook’s epic theatrical version of The Mahabharata. “Become yourself!” This is, as the experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe […]
Colleagues Tony Leiserowitz and Ed Maibach have released their latest survey report in the Global Warming Six Americas series. Below is the email summary from Tony describing the results from […]
Every so often, I find a paper with a title that’s too good not to share. Here’s today’s edition: Trapecar M, Vinkovic MK. Techniques for fingerprint recovery on vegetable and […]
Today marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most significant eruptions (video – archived from news broadcasts) of the last century (or more) – the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the […]
So it might not be so good for ratings to be doing a series on a movie that tanked at the box office. But here’s some more on NEVER LET […]
“A building in a bag” is how engineering students Will Crawford and Peter Brewin describe their invention Concrete Canvas. It is a ground-breaking material technology that allows for the construction […]
I fully realize I tend to have a bias towards explosive eruptions – I mean, it is hard to ignore something like this. However, that doesn’t mean I should have […]
A private Danish rocket launched recently had its first successful test flight. The event is a huge step forward for the team’s plan to eventually loft people on cheap suborbital spaceflights.
Last weekend, at a physics conference in France, physicist Giovanni Punzi showed that the signs of a new particle discovered at Fermilab had strengthened rather than disappeared.
Scientists at C.E.R.N., the European lab for particle physics, have announced that they trapped antimatter with very strong magnets for 1,000 seconds, smashing the old record.
I was dead wrong about Congressman Anthony Weiner. I don’t have a revision team, like Sarah Palin does, that will work overtime to try to make me look good when […]
N.A.S.A.’s newest Mars rover, Curiosity, will be deployed to the planet to study rocks that may shed light on whether life existed there. But its cousin Opportunity may steal its thunder.
Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa plans to plant and grow cucumbers aboard the International Space Station to study how future space travelers can harvest their own food.
I asked fellow BigThink blogger Kirsten Winkler if she would join me in writing about the recently-released 2011 K-12 Horizon Report. She’s done a nice job of summarizing the six […]