All Articles

There’s no such thing as universality in art, says Stephen Greenblatt. We always create and read from the perspective of our own time and place. What then accounts for the curious power some works have to communicate with us directly across the centuries?

It’s obvious why we are motivated to eat, drink and reproduce; the origins of our desire to push musical boundaries, on the other hand, are less clear. 

New research out of Cambridge University in the U.K. finds that husbands who do households chores are happier and experience greater wellbeing. This finding surprised the researchers, who hypothesized that […]

“Can Scientists Just Find the God Particle Already?” That was Gawker’s amusing headline last December when scientists at the nuclear research center CERN reported “tantalizing glimpses” of the Higgs subatomic […]

I was going to flip a coin to decide whether or not to write about the Supreme Court RATS – an acronym a progressive blogger from Daily Kos invented for […]

Something unusually delightful greeted students on the morning of June 19 as they lined up to enter Public School 10 in Brooklyn. The event had nothing to do with standardized […]

In case you thought that Obama’s comments in favor of same-sex marriage, Romney’s tepid response and recent polls were signs that American society is surging toward a consensus on basic […]

So Cato Institute president Ed Crane is taking an “early retirement” and megabucks former BB&T CEO John Allison is set to take his place. It’s easy to see why Allison […]

On the basis of having for a time shared a house with a John Roberts clerk who conveyed to me no useful information about the Chief Justice’s cast of mind, […]

This post was originally written for the “Because I Am An Atheist” series at The Crommunist Manifesto. Thanks to Crommunist for the inspiration! Because I am an atheist, I don’t […]

By smashing atoms of gold together at near-light speeds, scientists have created a primordial plasma state that existed for only one-millionth of second after the Big Bang occurred.

When Californians head to the polls this November, they will decide if genetically modified foods should be labeled as such. Meanwhile, scientists are engineering foods to make us healthier. 

Experimental psychologists have found that memory of learned processes, such as learning to play a specific piece of music, can be activated during sleep and strengthened in the process. 

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s new piece in The Atlantic about how women cannot “have it all” has provoked a wave of commentary, but none that I have seen has mentioned the article’s […]

Since April, we’ve been exploring the intersection of humanity and technology in our Humanizing Technologyseries, an online expo in partnership with Bing. Without a doubt, the series has had an […]

To gather data, scientists hope that tourists at this summer’s Olympics will take advantage of a new language translation app, soon to be available for free at Apple’s App Store. 

Scientists have created devices that collect energy produced by human locomotion. Their next goal is to improve efficiency so electricity can be collected and stored for later use. 

What’s the Big Idea? The paradox of hiring during times of economic hardship is that even when unemployment is high, even when businesses have a vast pool of potential hires […]

Last summer, the fastest way to spend $50 in America was to fill up at the pump. This summer, the fastest way to blow through $50 might be streaming videos and […]

Employers don’t want to patronize employees by making all of their benefits decisions for them, he says, but they can go a long way toward helping workers to understand their options.  

Leadership isn’t about making all the decisions. It’s about empowering talented people to make many of them for you, and utilizing their talents as effectively as possible.

We’re getting older. Not just as individuals, and not just as a country, but as a world.  A census report projects that between 2010 and 2050, the US will face a rapid […]

The recent berthing of SpaceX’s (NSG 100: SET; #1) Dragon capsule at the International Space Station (ISS) changed history by becoming the first commercial spacecraft to successfully berth with the […]

A panel of cosmologists recently affirmed that the laws of physics, specifically quantum mechanics, can explain why the Universe exists without appealing to divine powers. 

35 years after terrestrial astronomers received the Wow! signal, a radio transmission unique from the background noise of space, humanity is offering a reply. You can contribute via Twitter.

Researchers from the public and private sectors will come together this summer to create a nuclear fusion-powered propulsion system that could save precious mission time. 

By using “Big Brother” as a model, the Dutch company Mars One wants to create the world’s biggest media spectacle. The goal is to attract corporate sponsorship to pay for the mission. 

Unthinkable just a decade ago, several companies are putting together packages to take the wealthy into space. As the technology matures, people on more average incomes will be able to go. 

Over the last decade, Europe has a seen a rise in the use of so-called ‘Baby Boxes’. As The Telegraph reports: “Often found in the walls of hospitals the boxes […]

Leaving aside a few notable exceptions, the reactions to the latest UN Conference on Sustainable Development—Rio+20, as it’s widely known—read like a collective obituary for global governance.  Mark McDonald catalogued […]