In an often-quoted description, Richard Dawkins once wrote: “Ramachandran is a latterday Marco Polo, journeying the Silk Road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind.”
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Are cities the best place to live? Are suburbs OK? A fight grows in urban planning, with Harvard at the center.
Is Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, a puppet master of the news media? He would like you to think so. But The Times’s dealings with him reveal a different story.
For Americans, the name Iran conjures certain key images—the Shah, the Revolution of 1979, the hostages, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and black chador-clad women. Worn as part of the Islamic code […]
It would be wonderful if the forces of light and democracy took hold in Tunis and Cairo. But don’t count on it.
Bird droppings, snail slime, excreted coffee beans—there’s no substance so vile that it can’t be a must-have product. The Independent explores a world of very gross profits.
Eating food containing trans fats and saturated fats could contribute to depression, scientists reported Wednesday. Spanish researches followed 12,059 people over six years.
Times are still tough, but American independent cinema turns out to be a movement defined by stubborn true belief and survival. This year’s Sundance featured strong noncorporate films.
In a session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, the organizers pitted Larry Summers against Prof. Chua, perhaps better known as The Tiger Mom.
Pundits aren’t solely to blame for the vitriol. They’re just giving us what we want. To change our discourse we have to be masters, not slaves, to the cycle.
According to Hurricane Electric, an internet backbone and services provider based in Fremont, California, the internet will run out of bulk I.P. addresses sometime next week.
Robots started out conceptually as automaton-servants but instead of creating a modern-day butler, much robotics research today focuses on creating emotional machines.
A new book examines the sloppy studies that pass for scientific evidence in so many of today’s bestselling books that claim to expose neurologically-based sex differences.
While the U.S. favours Egyptian political reform in theory, in practice it props up an authoritarian system for pragmatic reasons of national self-interest.
Critics question whether microfinance is truly helping the poor or driving them further into poverty with aggressive client recruiting and high-interest lending.
After a series of protests against Tunisia’s repressive regime—sparked by high unemployment and rising food prices—forced its longtime leader Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country, President Obama declared […]
The US has a huge population of sex offenders to keep track of – a number greater than the entire population of Alaska.
“Community building is hard work,” says Bough. It’s one thing to get people to engage with your company, and wholly another thing to get them to continue that engagement.
Remember Scott Bursaw’s ingenious solar roadways prototype? Now, the small town of Krommenie in Northern Holland is planning to pilot a similar concept on cycling paths. Developed by Dutch innovation […]
The House Republican majority is trying to redefine “rape” in order to deny a large percentage of rape and incest victims access to Medicaid-funded abortions, Nick Baumann reports: “With this […]
This has been one busy week, both volcanically and personally, so I’m going to try not to write another three posts today. So, instead, let’s try to summarize all the […]
Forgery is the bane of the art world. But what does it mean when a forger practices his trade for art’s sake without accepting a cent in return?
Failure is a terrible thing, but there’s no other way for people to learn how to do most things except to screw up enough until the point where they get […]
BIG THINK has displayed a taste of the astute social commentary of Robert Putnam–the man who was so worried that so many Americans were bowling alone. The success of the megachurch, […]
At Grist this week, David Roberts features a deeply valuable interview with Sandra de Castro Buffington, head of the Hollywood, Health, and Society project at USC. She discusses the project’s […]
A cache of stone tools found on the Arabian Peninsula has reopened the critical question of when and how modern humans escaped from their ancestral homeland in eastern Africa.
China and India will always train more scientists and engineers. But at least America’s still got the best environment for ideas to grow.
Childhood phases we now take for granted—toddler, tween—were established by marketers, not doctors or child specialists. What should we know about girls’ princess phases?
Confident pronouncements of certainty have no place in psychiatry. Humility is the only honest attitude to take to this work. …Neither can we wait for definitive knowledge.
You may say your dream holiday would be trekking in a rainforest or white-water rafting but new research shows most of us are less daring than we think and prefer being beach-side.