Maybe we ought to give our U.S. political journalists and TV pundits the next hundred days off and let the British press report on our 2012 presidential elections instead. The […]
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Well, here’s an announcement! My first-ever original article for Salon has just been published, “Rise of the new atheists: Should non-believers make an alliance with religious progressives?” In it, I […]
By the year 2020, the world’s leading maker of wireless network equipment estimates that machines will interface with other machines more often than they will interact with humans.
The best mobile devices of tomorrow will “embed” your identity, says Rebekah Cox, product designer at Quora and formerly of Facebook. Identity, she says, comes down to communication.
The problem of having too much information at your fingertips was a problem the poet and novelist Percy Shelley was already aware of by the 19th century. He proposed a solution…
So deeply rooted, says Tom Doctoroff, is the Western belief in individual freedom, that it is nearly impossible for us to accept the fact that in Chinese culture, the individual does not exist outside of her network of familial and communal obligations.
The discovery of the Higgs boson was a real milestone for physics, a tremendous vindication of the hard work of thousands of physicists and engineers for the past 30 years. […]
What’s the Big Idea? Until the 1980s, the scientific consensus was that the nervous system was fixed and incapable of regeneration. Growth of neurons was considered most active during prenatal […]
I’m trying to understand this. Someone called Kristen Stewart, who is a Hollywood actress, issued an apology for having a (brief?) affair: “I’m deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment […]
So I’ve gotten some touching emails asking whether I was sick or dead because I hadn’t blogged for almost a whole week. Well, I was sick with an unfashionable or […]
Philosophy professor Santiago Zabala argues that using online identities to mediate our communication is a threat to our autonomy, but what is the best way to get our liberty back?
A British man convicted of sending a “menacing” Tweet has been exonerated by appealing to a law passed in 1935. How will our legal system ever accommodate the speed of technology?
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food production will need to increase at least 50 percent in order to meet the demand of a vastly growing world population.
Reportedly, last May there was a shoot-out between U.S. and Honduran anti-narcotics agents and traffickers. Residents were “infuriated” about the presence of U.S. and Honduran police, and set out to push local drug traffickers out of their communities.
Payday Loans are a trap of high interest loans for people who have a hard time repaying what they borrow. Oklahoma, Missouri and Washington are the states with the most storefronts that lure borrowers.
The United States Defense Department has been beckoned by the Pentagon to clearly define its strategy in the Pacific towards Asia.
President Obama’s new healthcare law is good news for the 30 million people who will have access to health insurance. However, health experts worry if the medical profession industry will be prepared to meet the demand.
Does democracy require universal suffrage? Yes, I think so. So does the Supreme Court. Economist Bryan Caplan isn’t so sure. A few years ago Caplan identified several pernicious biases individuals […]
Summary: A solid, informative history of the rise of the American secular movement. Books like Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: A History or Susan Jacoby’s Freethinkers show how brave nonbelievers have […]
Given the increasing influence that neuroscientific explanations have over our justice system, we must insist on improving scientific literacy so that the foundations of justice are upheld.
Computer algorithms can already recognize the kind of music most people like but will they ever create original compositions that suite our taste? One programmer says yes, definitely.
The psychological phenomenon known as the mere-exposure effect explains why we prefer the self-image we receive from the mirror each morning to a new and interesting camera angle.
By studying individuals who become aware that they are dreaming in the midst of a dream, scientists can identify the parts of the brain that are responsible for self-awareness.
Scientists have used beams of light to activate specific areas of a monkey’s brain, allowing the monkey to react to assigned tasks more quickly and complete them faster than before.
A few weeks ago, I posted a video of “Satellite,” the first single from Anna Dagmar‘s newest album of the same title. I first saw her play at a concert […]
When it comes to debating the merits of religion, we atheists have an unfair advantage. Lately, almost every day when I go to work, there are Jehovah’s Witnesses in the […]
According to the International AIDS Society, out of the world’s 34 million people infected with the HIV virus very few are actually receiving the necessary treatment to control the disease.
Scientists have discovered a “scaffolding” protein that regulates pain, mental illnesses and other neurological complications.
“In the decade since the Human Genome Project wrapped up, scientists have had a surprising amount of difficulty transforming genetic knowledge into medical treatments.”
Researchers have conducted a study, in combination with previous studies, to find the correlation between night shift workers and heart problems.