Amanda Marcotte, Matt Yglesias, and Atrios are debating the concept of “guilty pleasures” in pop culture. Here’s my theory of what guilty pleasures are. For people my age, taste is […]
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Would you choose the state of equality and justice envisioned by John Rawls or the state of radical individual liberty envisioned by Robert Nozick? This question is posed by Yale professor Tamar Gendler in this week's Floating University lecture.
So one of the guys at Panera Bread this morning asked my view on the FLAT TAX or FAIR TAX or whatever. My reponse was that my objection to the […]
Scientists are getting closer to creating life from a test tube in laboratory settings. Thanks to machines that replicate R.N.A. strands, Earth may be the first place we experience alien life.
Welcome to the club. Let’s begin with the name, which is swiped from the Cambridge Moral Sciences Club, a philosophy discussion group founded in 1878 for Cambridge men who were doing […]
BY JASON SILVA “Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.” –Alphonse de Lamartine, French romantic poet. PART I: DREAMING WITH […]
Climate change campaigns in the United States that focus on the risks to people in foreign countries or even other regions of the U.S. are likely to inadvertently increase polarization […]
For years, researchers have known about the existence of Junk DNA – long sequences of DNA for which no known purpose or function has been identified. In some cases, this […]
Janet Malcolm is a careful writer. The new Paris Review has an interview with her. The Review still publishes the best interviews on code-cracking the art of writing. This exchange—which […]
Corporate America’s ability to create value the past few years has underwhelmed us. That, coupled with many other environmental effects, has led to many new players entering our consumer technology community. […]
One of the frustrations that comes with a new and interesting idea is the large number of people who will tell you that you’re actually saying something old and familiar. […]
The state of the art of art in the United States and beyond in 2010 reflected the larger unrest of the world itself. I originally wanted to compartmentalize things into […]
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JASON SILVA AND TECHNO-ECOLOGIC SCHOLAR RICHARD DOYLE Richard Doyle also goes by mobius, an indicator of just how important interconnections are to him – and how transformative, […]
One frequent question I get is whether we can break the light barrier—because unless we can break the light barrier, the distant stars will always be unreachable.
Some on the right are challenging congressional Republicans to increase federal investment in science and technology.
When The New Yorker Probes the “Decline Effect,” An Opportunity Emerges to Rethink Science Education
At the New Yorker last week, science journalist Jonah Lehrer penned a conversation-starting feature on the so-called “decline effect,” the tendency across scientific fields for a new and exciting finding […]
Dr. Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University, says we should develop a "Google-like" chip that could be implanted in our brains to enhance human memory.
After nearly 8 years as founding editor of The Scientist magazine, Richard Gallagher is stepping down to pursue new journalistic ventures. Gallagher helmed The Scientist as it grew into one […]
This isn’t a political, but a commercial world map: it specifies the six distinct global ‘DVD regions’ of the world. DVD is short for ‘digital video disc’, the successor to […]
Plato's fabled continent, as depicted by Kircher in the 17th century, looks a bit familiar...
“In fact, it is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. Some say that the only thing that quantum theory has […]
If Europe has one defining cultural characteristic, it is that it has none. This may sound like too neat a paradox, but it’s not that far from the truth. There […]
I’ve been critiquing the Tea Party since its first stirrings in 2009. I’ve blogged, tweeted, reported, and even given public lectures about its roots in the socially conservative New Right, […]
Michael Moore is in a class by himself when it comes to generating news attention, advance publicity, and box office for his documentary films. For example, when I was in […]
If you want to rile up a biologist and have no pointed stick handy, try this: Tell her that chemistry or physics are “harder,” more fundamentally “sciencey” sciences than hers. […]
This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]
The man tried to murder Pope John Paul II and later claimed to be Jesus has emerged from prison demanding $7m for tell-all film and book deals which he wants Dan Brown to write.
In 2005, The New York Times revealed that under a presidential order signed in 2002, the National Security Agency (NSA) had been monitoring the phone calls, e-mails, and internet traffic […]
It has become fashionable to castigate Twitter - the microblogging service - as an expression of rampant narcissism. Yet, narcissists are verbose and they do not take kindly to limitations imposed on them by third parties.