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It seems to me that our communication will begin in terms of mathematics and physics.

“Poe is one of the writers who make us who we are,” wrote E. L. Doctorow. So how is it that Poe’s countrymen could be so hostile to the man? As it turns out, there was villainy at work. 

Vivian Maier took about 150,000 pictures during her lifetime, but never showed a single one to another living soul. When she died in April 2009, Vivian was remembered as a […]

This is the basis of what we call creativity: not a deus ex machina scrawling on a tabula rasa, but the mind’s constant search for interesting new ways of grouping the data we’re constantly taking in.

The top rung of Patanjali’s eight-limbed Ashtanga ladder, Samadhi, has been defined in numerous ways. Usually associated with the last step before enlightenment, it is translated as ‘ecstasy,’ and has […]

If your smartphone is glued to your hand, then, we believe you are already a kind of Cyborg.

As we learn about things more deeply and more deeply, we will discover that in fact, there’s all kinds of peripheral work to be done that we couldn’t have even imagined looking forward. 

While Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley busy themselves making every aspect of our lives more efficient (except, perhaps, for the process of discovering these new technologies, learning them, and integrating […]

If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you’ll probably be familiar with the name Sokal from the Sokal affair, the scandal in 1996 in which physicist […]

James Webb will grant a peerless gaze at the universe the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Once you know what the laws of nature are, another kind of question unfolds itself which is why are those the laws and not other laws.

            What a revealing real-time lesson we are living through right now in how humans respond to risk. More than a million people in Boston and several large surrounding cities […]

The facts aren’t in, but here’s what we know: The internationally renowned athlete, Oscar Pistorius, was part of a violent shooting at his home, resulting in the death of his […]

Our attitude toward the pathologizing may be more destructive than the pathologizing itself.—James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology Trauma affects all of us. Types of trauma—physical, emotional, violent, intrusive, social, or the […]

A study of U.S. Air Force drone operators has found they experience post-traumatic stress and other mental-health troubles at the same rate as pilots who are actually flying aircraft in […]

What can math be used for? Here’s a wise answer: two basic forms of geometry are used in almost every engineering project and every physics discovery that has ever been made.

Henry Molaison, known for most of his life as H.M., was a medical oddity. Surgery to cure severe epilepsy in the 1950s led to the removal of his hippocampus, which […]

Brain imaging studies show that every time we learn a new task, we’re changing our brain by expanding our neural network.

What do Sir Richard Branson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Paul Mitchell founder John Paul DeJoria; bestselling author/speakers Jack Canfield, Gregg Braden, Barbara Marx Hubbard; three-time Nobel nominated Dr. Scilla Elworthy; philanthropist […]

This seems to be a week of sex-focused controversy. But then sex tends to have that effect, even when it’s just our own species. Nelson Jones wrote about a German […]

Industry representatives have long coached their employees on the addictive properties of mobile devices. Now they are warning the public that there can be too much of a good thing. 

The notion of “painful news” is a common metaphor, but this Israeli study suggests there might be literal truth in the cliché. In a study of chronic-pain patients, it found […]

First lady Michele Obama has written a new gardening book. Called “American Grown,” the book extols the virtues of sustainable local agriculture, school gardens and childhood nutrition.

This one comes courtesy of a dear friend, who monitors the superfluous, hyper-genderizing of merchandise. At just the moment when gender roles for many of us have never been more […]

War, as Clausewitz said, is the continuation of politics by other means [1]. But sometimes, war itself is being continued by other means – cartographic means. Maps are an excellent […]

What’s the Big Idea? The goal of technology is to make itself disappear bit by bit. Most major innovations in consumer technology are measured by their ability to make existing […]

The constant stimulation provided by our mobile devices activates the brain’s reward center, like cocaine, but also causes stress by never giving us a break from our responsibilities. 

The same mindset that drives a person to have it all eventually stops them from having what they really want. 

While discovering the Higgs particle would bode well for the validity of the Standard Model, there are still lingering questions which the Large Hadron Collider has yet to find answers to.

The top videos of summer, ’12, featuring experts such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dr. Michio Kaku, Slavoj Zizek, Jaron Lanier and many others.