They say that you’re not supposed to apologize for not blogging. Instead, you’re supposed to just start back up again. But I’m usually much more prolific online and have been absent for […]
All Articles
Forget the mouse and keyboard, and even the swipe, pinch and touch – the next generation of human-computer interactions will be the gesture, the body movement and even thoughts from […]
“What happened to Africa?” an art-world friend of New York Times writer Holland Cotter asked. “It disappeared.” What that friend was alluding to, and what Cotter analyzes in a recent […]
Today, I was planning to write about memory in decision making, but when I came across this new review in Current Directions in Psychological Science, I felt like I had […]
Salman Khan’s self-paced learning model reverses the traditional “one size fits all” educational paradigm. Khan’s model assigns video lectures as homework, and “what used to be homework the students now […]
There are three major functions of higher education: knowledge, socialization and accreditation. How can the Web simulate this experience of college?
Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell argues China’s currency has become “almost de facto convertible” and should be included in the international reserve basket held by the IMF.
Activity at the Philippine caldera Taal continues to increase. The latest update on Taal from PHIVOLCS reports 21 earthquakes under the volcano in the 24 hours between April 17-18, meaning […]
There’s been a violent backlash on Greece’s streets over the country’s austerity package and $157b bailout. Angry Greeks are pressing for the country to default on its debt.
Aung San Suu Kyi: “Human beings want to be free and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, there will come a time when they say ‘That’s it.'”
Finnish voters have ousted a pro-bailout government and hung a question mark over Europe’s plans to rescue Portugal and other debt-ridden economies.
A leaked report says the Sri Lankan government shelled hospitals, fired on civilians in no-fire zones and attacked the U.N. and Red Cross in the last days of civil war two years ago.
The BRICS countries are bypassing Europe as they build what will become the shortest and fastest internet route between the Americas, Africa and India and China.
While the British Navy may have secured military victory for the British Empire, Shakespeare’s words secured the peace.
I always chuckle at the old joke about the dyslexic atheist holding up a sign saying, “There is no Dog!” Whenever talk turns to revelations and apocalypses, we all seem […]
This map, distributed in France in the last year of the First World War, uses a trope common to a lot of cartographic propaganda: the enemy as an octopus, a […]
Just so you don’t think I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth … I have been at the 2011 Keck Geology Symposium for Undergraduate Research at Union College for […]
Reflections on Rapture, Ecstasy, and Technology BY JASON SILVA “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin, and this is a participatory universe.”. – John Archibald Wheeler Sober, immersive reading is […]
Two decades after creating the World Wide Web, in a speech at an MIT symposium, Tim Berners-Lee said that “access to the web is now a human right”. Probably not many […]
The Strange Death of Radical Journalism And so to another inconvenient truth that should trouble anyone interested in the clash of ideas, real passion in journalism, polemic and a radicalism […]
Looking at the language of critical response to the novel, there are parallels. This is not to say that David Foster Wallace cared for Hamlet. But he seemed to care […]
A (Gallup) study shows that only 35% of our independents now approve of the work our president is doing. There are a variety of reasons for that. But here’s the one that […]
We spend our lives inside buildings, our thoughts shaped by their walls. How do different spaces influence cognition? Is there an ideal kind of architectural structure for different kinds of thinking?
Reprogrammed stem cells from schizophrenia patients have helped researchers determine that fewer connections are made between the neurons of a schizophrenic compared to those of healthy individuals.
New evidence of how antidepressant drugs help to boost brain cell formation could lead to better treatments for depression, a disease which inhibits the production of neurons in the hippocampus.
A tiny chip implant is enabling paralyzed and injured people to move objects by the power of their thoughts—the implications of brain-computer interface reach into the science fiction realm.
We are working longer hours and retiring later so why shouldn’t we compensate by taking a pill to stimulate our brain—what’s the objection to staying awake and concentrating better?
This semester, 22 undergraduate and graduate students from a diversity of majors at American University have participated in a new course that I created titled “Science, Environment and the Media.” […]
Technology has changed the way that men buy sex making it possible for a greater share of sex workers to work indoors. This may sound like workers are moving off […]
Contrary to expectations, asthma rates have skyrocketed in urban areas in the U.S. that are not particularly clean; respiratory infections in early childhood may actually be a risk factor for it.