Science and poetry both depend on metaphor. Science typically uses at least two. The first is usually Pythagoras’s astonishingly fruitful, but also limiting, “all things are numbers.” The second shapes […]
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More than 20 people are dead and at least 90 are missing and presumed dead after a huge hillside of mud and clay and rock collapsed and slid down into […]
It’s a delicious treat to watch godless libertarians rise to the defense of Protestant evangelicals this week.
In my debut column last week, I discussed how the financing landscape is radically changing through crowdfunding. Naturally, everyone is catching onto this phenomenon, including celebrities. But now that Zach […]
“Regrets, I’ve had a few,” Frank Sinatra warbled in “My Way,” before adding wistfully, “But, then again, too few to mention.” Sinatra sang that song at the end of a […]
Now that the Higgs has been discovered, the Standard Model is complete. But are there any other new particles? “The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws […]
Writers loathe using cliches like “Orwellian” and “Kafkaesque.” But sometimes, it can’t be helped, especially when you’re Christopher Hitchens getting arrested in communist Czechoslovakia. He tells a very “Hitchensian” story […]
While it’s not a Frankenstein’s monster, it’s still an exciting advancement toward creating life from scratch. The journal Science announced that a team of scientists produced a yeast chromosome. The […]
Before there was David Lynch’s Dune, there was Jodorowsky’s Dune. This film project never made it off the ground, but the team that the mad genius avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky […]
When it comes to picking a beverage of choice, it should be water, plain and simple. Our bodies are around 60% water. So why shouldn’t we be chugging our eight […]
The missing Malaysian jet may have ignited a fear of flying in many. Statistically, a missing plane is an extremely rare occurrence. What we should all be terrified of when […]
Anant Agrawal is the president of edX, an online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT. As Bill Clinton said at the Global Education & Skills Forum, it’s important to […]
Change is hard to do. In fact, for many “change” is a dirty word. Regardless, our society is set-up to embrace change. Every New Years Eve we flaunt our resolutions […]
A while back I wrote a post about the problem of pseudoscience in TED talks and how this problem was made so much worse by the failure across the board […]
In an era of budget, time, and labor constraints, is it possible to sell your ideas and concepts (which often require money, time, and labor to implement) to the CEO, […]
Walking around London, it’s easy to imagine what the city looked like in the 1700s. A project by Redditor Shystone made it much easier to go back in time. Old […]
Tim Harford presents two surprising examples when explaining how recessions work. A contributor to the Financial Times and author of five books, including his latest, The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, […]
An extraordinarily simple explanation of the most mind-boggling concept of modern science. “In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.” -Walt […]
“The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.” – Copernicus
In 2012, Gregory Harpel, an amateur paleontologist digging around a streambed in Monmouth County, N.J., stumbled upon what he first assumed to be a rock. It turned out that it […]
These dazzling cosmic waves of blue with dark crests can be found in the constellation Orion. They are the product of M78 and other bright reflection nebula. NASA explains their […]
“Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal.” – Sappho
“Crazy at any price!” read a sign above the modern art masterpieces at the Nazi-sponsored Entartete Kunst (“Degenerate Art,” in English) exhibition in Munich, Germany, in 1937. The fevered brainchild […]
In honor of last week’s enormous discovery of the Big Bang’s smoking gun, let’s go back to the search for the “God particle,” which we of course covered here on […]
John Davies is an expert on bringing technology into classrooms. As the general manager of the Intel World Ahead Program, Davies’ mission is to understand how to increase access to […]
You’ll be investing 5-to-7 years of your life. What will you get back? “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” –Benjamin Franklin Recently, a number of people — of widely different ages […]
Superconducting levitation may be omnipresent one day and revolutionize transportation. This video explains how it works and shows you the possibilities of this amazing technology:
How does NASA control the flow of fluids in Space? NASA invented ferrofluid. It turns out the stuff is multipurpose when you apply rare earth magnets. Check out the ferrofluid […]
Mindfulness in corporate culture has been an emergent field over the past decade. Companies such as Google and the US Army offer yoga and meditation to their workers in hopes […]
There are a lot of ways to entertain oneself on the International Space Station. Playing with a large sphere of water is one of them. Watch what happens when an […]