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 […]
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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?
Obsessing over the injustices of Guantánamo Bay may become a surrogate for a wider hatred of America. But read the files and you’ll realise that obsession is the only humane response.
The story of hunger and poverty is very complex. It is a world where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead. Where more money may not mean more food.
There has been some discussion over the years here on Eruptions about what might happen if you were to bomb an eruption volcano. Now, this might be to divert a […]
In a guest post today, Samantha Miller digs deeper into understanding the nature of labeling in the organic food market. Miller is a graduate student in Journalism at American University. […]
There is so much beautiful writing about war. One of the first, best stories of a soldier (and his return home) is Homer’s The Odyssey. It captures –metaphorically, and at […]
Another fine feature of REAL EDUCATION by Hacker and Dreifus is its sensitive and altogether unideological treatment of professors who become legends. Among the legends they mention, one is still […]
This semester, as part of the course on Science, the Environment and the Media at American University, four graduate students in the class have focused their group project on the […]
The first thing you hear from him is a complaint: He’s talking, but the other guy isn’t listening. The last thing he does is announce he’s not going to talk […]