Search Results

Many characteristics of the sociopathic personality—charm, ambition and impatience, an ability to attack problems with cold-hearted logic (not letting emotions get in the way)—are useful to society.

The annual rite of February’s African-American History Month in America feels more and more like a mixed blessing with each passing year. On one hand, setting aside time to learn […]

The following is a guest post by Mark Molloy “Sir we know our will is free, and there’s an end on’t.” (Samuel Johnson as quoted by J. Boswell in The Life […]

California’s program is still young and isn’t the world’s first emission trading program, but here are the top four reasons we’re celebrating – and why the global community should, too.

Does space stretch or does new space get created, and what does that mean for the conservation of energy? “If you put yourself in a position where you have to stretch […]

How an observational signature from Cosmic Inflation could herald the scientific revolution of the century “Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at […]

Over the past century a war has been fought in universities around the world which has resulted in countless bottles of red ink spilled over students’ work, in the form […]

A new image editing method will have graphic designers cheering and weeping in equal measure. The new technique lets you take a two-dimensional image, and with as little as three […]

It’s a scientific truth of the Universe, one that many people — children especially — have trouble coming to terms with. But it doesn’t have to be a tragedy. “Through that last dark cloud is […]

If we scaled the entire Universe’s history from the Big Bang until now to be “one Universe year,” what would our future look like? “The way to love anything is to […]

Let others debate whether Santa Claus is white or not. There’s no debate that the definitive American Santa is political cartoonist Thomas Nast’s Merry Old Santa Claus (detail shown above) […]

You’ll frequently hear people say “the science is settled.” Scientifically speaking, can it ever be? “All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to […]

In September I covered a paper that described the massive amount of bias created in the legal system in parts of the US where forensic laboratories are paid in return […]

For younger Americans, the President might very well be most vividly remembered for the way he died.

So I’m teaching a seminar this semester on Technology, Biotechnology, and Democracy. Its balanced effort, of course, will be show how technology makes our lives both better and worse, as […]

Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, responded quite positively to the final point of my appreciative comments on his book.  I said liberal education is always countercultural.  Mark wisely […]

Last week, I invited a few friends to come together and talk about Bitcoin. The conversation was wide ranging (read: ill-organized), but interesting. Three key topics emerged out of the […]

This past weekend people gathered in the nation’s capitol to mark the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech that was part of the […]

I learned about last week’s fire in Seaside Park through a conspiracy theory. It read simply: ‘And I’m sure this was an accident.’ Given Jersey’s long history of questionable accidents—just […]

Yuval Levin, in his neglected classic Imagining the Future, claims that there are two characteristic ways of viewing our technological and biotechnological future.  One is in terms of innovations, the […]

So you might think I’m excessively anti-technological.  That’s not true at all.  I do think that liberal education should be a counterweight to all our technological obsessions.  That means its […]

The Stories They Tell celebrates “September 12th thinking” at its best—a generosity of the spirit, a heroism within us all, and a strength to continue moving forward despite the terrible knowledge that the anarchy and insanity that spawned the attacks exists in our world.

Who will win this death match?

Ramez Naam looks at the power of innovation to overcome natural resource and environmental challenges.

One article talks about the declining rates of procreation. Another contemplates job mobility. When I pull the fragments together into one tableau I’m left with the question: How it attachment […]

Under what circumstances would I agree to disagree?

Introducing Buddhism, Blasphemy, and Blackmail

In metallurgy, an alloy is a mixture of two different metals that has different properties than either of those metals taken separately. 

The afterlife, in the words of Tennyson [1], is “that untravell’d world whose margin fades / For ever and forever when I move”.  Death is the ultimate one-way trip, its […]

Reincarnation is bunk.