Is a virtual currency free of intermediaries tenable given the recent string of hacker attacks? One user of Bitcoin, a decentralized virtual currency, claims $500,000 was stolen from his account.
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When friction makes machines less efficient, we grease the gears, but that macro solution doesn’t work with nanotechnology. Researchers are learning to shake nanomachines instead.
Google’s web-based laptop, Chromebook, is a valiant experiment, says Pogue, but unless you’re an early-adopter masochist with money to burn, you probably shouldn’t buy one.
A year ago, Ronald Shaich, the founder of Panera Bread, one of the biggest restaurant chains in the States, decided to try something different. He opened the Panera Cares Community […]
As I tracked with several colleagues in a 2009 paper, climate change-related health impacts such as extreme heat, disease, and respiratory problems, and more vivid threats such as hurricanes have received relatively […]
A couple of days ago Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave a wide-ranging interview to the Associated Press, touching on Yemen. The secretary, who earlier this year admitted the US […]
Well, I finally wrote the article I always wanted to write: a letter to my 3,000+ faculty peers in Educational Leadership preparation programs all across the country about how our […]
A European space telescope has found 10 previously unknown alien planets, all of which are gaseous like Saturn or Jupiter. They boost the count of extrasolar planets to 565.
Airbus says in 40 years time we’ll be able to take night flights, 30,000 feet in the air, and be able to stargaze thanks to the plane’s nature-inspired transparent fuselage.
Is the sun about to enter a quiet phase in the 11-year solar cycle and what does that mean for our planet? Is there anything in all the talk about another “Little Ice Age”?
Members of an Italian commission that assesses major risks like earthquakes have been accused of manslaughter for allegedly not adequately informing residents of risk in 2009.
Why the urban model of widely separated high-rise towers in single-use residential districts—the “tower-in-a-park” model invented in the 1920s in Europe—is inefficient.
When George Washington (with some help from the French) forced the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown to end the American Revolution in 1781, the British played […]
Are we truly looking forward to an “Age of Abundance,” as Peter Diamandis suggests? A Big Think panel debates the future of business in the 21st century.
Presuming we can be über rational about risk denies the reality of the risks that arise because we CAN’T be.
Read about it here. The movement for a generation or so has been toward a lifestyle of increasing freedom on our college campuses. That’s meant “no rules” (beyond those connected with health-and-safety, and […]
In early 2009, I came across a new trend on the social web that immediately resonated with me. Local communities used a new platform called Meetup (www.meetup.com) to organize offline events . . .
When Spain claimed to have dismantled the leadership of the leaderless hacktivist organisation Anonymous”, was this real ignorance or an intentional attempt to disinform?
What is the significance of the hacking of the U.S. Senate’s website? Should we be concerned about the small, “just-for-kicks” release of some internal Senate data?
iPhone photo-sharing service Instagram is just 8-months-old and already has 5 million users. But revenue is almost zero. Such a start-up could monetize its success, but should it?
Twitter excels in aligning relevance with those who understand how to filter streams to their advantage. The paradox is that this human seismograph shouldn’t work, but it does.
Facebook privacy is the new oxymoron, like jumbo shrimp, says Alexandra Petri. She sees us in the grip of a digital Stockholm syndrome. Sometimes we want to leave, but we never will.
Note to the Republican Party Debate Committee: you are free to appropriate the term “preseason exhibitions” from the NFL, since it looks like they won’t be using it any time […]
With typically Hibernian hyperbole, James Joyce once claimed that “if [Dublin] suddenly disappeared from the earth, it could be reconstructed from my book.” That book would of course be Ulysses […]
Heading into one of the first major Presidential debates of the 2012 election campaign, it’s time to ask: What role will social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube play […]
This weekend I flew to lovely Pasco, WA to officiate a friend’s wedding — it was an amazing event and was truly enjoyable. On my way back, I had an […]
Iceland’s 320 000 citizens all have a say in the writing of their new constitution. With the help of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, the 25-member council drafting the constitution […]
Polls have shown that public opinion is clearly trending in favor of gay marriage. And yet, it will take bipartisan action to pass legislation in New York this week.
The perennial question: how does media affect action? Or, to put it in more specific terms, does watching violent things on TV, reading about risk-taking on the internet, or playing […]
As we head off into the weekend, I thought I’d put up a new Mystery Volcano Photo. If you remember the last one, it was a doozy submitted by my former introductory […]