The increasing number of urban gardens that are springing up across cities like Washington, D.C. are much more than the addition of new green space, they are important sites of […]
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An M.I.T. study argues that keeping nuclear waste in temporary storage for decades, rather than permanently burying it, would save money and create energy dividends in the long run.
A cutting-edge experiment hunting for antimatter galaxies and signs of dark matter that was very nearly cancelled is finally poised to voyage into orbit aboard the next-to-last space shuttle mission.
Philosophers may have spent many ‘sleepless nights of the soul’ contemplating the existence of God. Yet bleary-eyed physicists may have beaten them to the prize: has the so-called ‘God particle’ been discovered?
The discovery of the so-called “God Particle” won’t have any practical implications in your life—at least not anytime soon—says one physicist.
Amy Davidson’s post about the WikiLeaks Guantanamo release is an excellent example of writing short, with feeling—and meaning. One reason so many of the New Yorker blogs work well with […]
I passed a wishing well recently, or rather a fountain full of coins tossed in by passers by. I was always told to make a wish in secret as I […]
A good computer game, like a good lesson plan, challenges a player’s skills but also makes it not too frustrating or impossible to win.
Eruptions reader Gitta noted a fairly impressive ash plume at Chile’s Planchón-Peteroa – at least seen on the webcam. The plume isn’t especially tall (see below), at least not from […]
As the pace of technology advances and machines begin to more closely resemble humans, should robots be granted legal rights? Some countries are already laying the groundwork.
We know that teens text a LOT: the average teenager sends 3,339 texts a month. Many adults are worried about the potential negative impacts upon youth of all of this texting. […]
When I was a kid, atheists ruled over large swatches of the world and mainstream conventional wisdom expected religion to die out. If Communism (not then acquainted with history’s ash-heap) […]
There has been an awful lot of debate about the decision to close the airspace over Europe for days during the beginning of the explosive phase at Eyjafjallajökull last spring. […]
900 million people worldwide live without safe drinking water according to WHO and UNICEF. In most of these areas it is the women and the kids who have to walk […]
Wired—which says you should care about the controversy over iPhones and Android smartphones tracking users’ location—reports on legal action by two Apple customers.
Digital information services and social networks provide an unending firehose of real-time content. What is curation, who should do it, and why do we need it now more than ever?
Feudal society had many elements of commons production and huge disparities in incomes. Just like digital manor economies today. The digital peasants are getting restless.
What’s special about Facebook’s Deals? What’s in it for users and what are the implications for direct competitors Groupon and LivingSocial and, down the track, PayPal?
About 500 million people in India have no form of reliable identification. The government has started a five-year $430m project to address that with a huge biometric database.
A week and a half ago, I found myself at Camp Nelson, which trained the third largest contingent of African American soldiers during the Civil War, the sole African American […]
As the pace of technology advances and machines get smarter, should robots be granted legal rights? Some countries are already laying the groundwork.
If the hunt for the God Particle really is over, what does that mean for physics and, more importantly, for you?
After the space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center this week, there will only be one more space shuttle mission left before the era of NASA’s manned […]
A limited-edition map celebrated the coincidence of a patriotic occation with a pig-centric one.
The former Foreign Affairs editor dissects the massive demographic and environmental tensions building in China and threatening its rise.
One of the major strategic communication battles that took place during the debate over cap and trade legislation was the advertising war between the Clean Coal Coalition and Al Gore’s […]
New technology start-ups are increasingly locating in Berlin, where many companies are beginning to innovate rather than simply clone successful American ideas.
Piracy is not the only problem in the complex, multi-border world of modern merchant shipping. Unsafe and abusive ships abound. Do we need a “Save Our Seafarers” campaign?
Leading from behind. Is that the best policy for the U.S. in a world in which its power is waning? America must act more humbly, maybe, but is it stuck again in the Middle East?