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I was pretty content looking at CPAN last night, watching the people milling around the University of Arizona’s arena after President Obama’s remarks during the memorial service for those killed […]

You have got to admire a journalist who does not mess around with burying a cliche, but just goes ahead and leads with it. I disagree with a handful of […]

For the past few years one of the more intriguing questions about Yemen has been: what is Muhammad bin Nayyif (Saudi Arabia’s deputy Minister of the Interior) thinking about his […]

As I have skimmed through the Wikileaks documents coming out of San’a and Riyadh I have been asking myself a number of different questions here are three (I promise some […]

Well, after sorting through all of the Leadership Day 2010 posts, tracking down incorrect URLs, deleting a few nonexistent items, and reviewing some attempts to recycle old posts, I believe […]

[This is a guest post from Don Watkins, responding to an earlier guest post by Doug Green. If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, drop me a note. Happy […]

Dear Reader,  I apologize for the length of this article. It’s actually two articles smashed into one.  All together this post will take roughly 5 minutes to read.  I generally […]

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

It’s amazing what you can find in art when you really, really want to find it there. Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage claims that they’ve found evidence of a […]

For many in the Labour Party, the promotion of Ed Balls to Shadow ­Chancellor was as inevitable as it was long overdue. I was among many party members who argued […]

Like the banshee of Irish and Scottish legend, Scottish artist Susan Philipsz keens songs of lamentation and loss that haunt those within hearing of the “sound sculptures” centered on her […]

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog] n Many of you know that I occasionally try to wrap my head around various aspects of the education blogosphere. In the past I’ve written […]

Well, things got busy enough yesterday that the post I was hoping to write just never materialized. Not only did I have the useful academic load, but I also gave […]

In 2008, 41,269 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with HIV, an increase of 8% from only three years earlier. Known infections make up only 75% of total infections, leaving […]

I tackle questions from you, the Eruptions audience. In this mailbag: what makes Chaiten so special, what is the volcanic legacy of the Appalachians and where did all this magma come from anyway?

[This is a guest post from Doug Green. If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, drop me a note. Happy reading!] Update: see also Don Watkins’ response to this […]

nn I’ve hit the 100th post mark on Eruptions, which isn’t too bad for a few months on the blog. nn If anyone has any suggestions of what they would […]

Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad […]

In last week’s cover story at New York magazine on the forthcoming Facebook biopic “The Social Network,” the film’s screenwriter Aaron Sorkin offers his pessimism about the nature and impact […]

Released just yesterday, Physics of the Future is my most ambitious book to date. Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the […]

Borders are to maps what icing is to cakes. Tracing their course between countries and across continents is a source of great enjoyment for the cartophile, as is contemplating their […]

An companion piece to Indian novelist Pankaj Mishra’s elegant Times Op-Ed on India is Isaac Chotiner’s essay in the Times Book Review on (literary magazine)Granta’s Pakistan Issue. Chotiner references Pakistani […]

One of my roommates way back when I was an undergraduate was an Emory Scholar. I can’t remember exactly how many of them were in each class—either twelve or fourteen. […]

Scrolling through the 2010 Power 100 of Art Review, I almost immediately had two reactions.  First, I’m not on it!  (Bloggers get little to no respect.)  Second, so many of […]

In The Happening, “Marky” Mark Wahlberg plays a science teacher who tells his students that evolution is just a theory.Over at IO9, an influential science fiction and science blog, there’s […]

A news report from Pakistan suggests a volcano just erupted in that country – which is quite a surprise. UPDATED: huh?

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, […]

More threats to life and limb by Australian volcanoes, real threat posed by Hualalai and the impact of the Siberian Traps on trees.

It’s difficult to figure out which was worse, the original “No Pressure” video released by the UK climate campaign 10:10 that depicted kids being blown up for not acting on […]

NASA is in a catch 22 situation.  Five years ago, Congress mandated by law that NASA should track 90% of all of the dangerous asteroids and comets that may threaten […]