The handle of the Big Dipper leads you to Arcturus, the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. But there’s a deep-sky wonder hiding in plain sight, if you know where […]
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What is preventing us from formulating the optimum drug policy?
Fewer than 14% of American silent films still exist today in complete form according to “The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929,” a recent Library of Congress report by […]
Statistics don’t tell the whole story. Be wary of anyone who claims that they do.
“Artists don’t have families,” the mysterious Warner Dax tells confused painter Daniel at their first meeting in the new film The Time Being. Dax (played by film and theater legend […]
Fox News this week has the not very surprising news that the Obama Administration is looking for social scientists to help form a “Behavioral Insights Team” that, like the group […]
Lower your expectations now. You’ll find yourself much more satisfied by the end.
Make no mistake: the first powered SS1 launch was the catalyst that inspired hundreds of entrepreneurs throughout the world to follow their NewSpace dreams.
Before the end of the Second World War, officials from the Allied nations met up at a resort town in New Hampshire to create a new economic order for the […]
If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]
A new business venture aims to simplify what it calls a bloated and confusing pharmaceutical industry by selling low-dose over-the-counter medicine packets for problems like headaches and insomnia.
One of the biggest misconceptions about post-rational behavioral research is that its effects on society are small. From the news you get the impression “behavioral economics” is all about changing […]
“Ain’t got no rest in my slumbers/ Ain’t got no feelings to bruise/ Ain’t got no telephone numbers/ I ain’t got nothing but the blues,” goes Jazz composer Duke Ellington’s […]
The art equivalent of the old “if a tree falls in the forest…” question is, if nobody (or nearly nobody) can see a masterpiece, is it still a masterpiece? How […]
This week, we witnessed another step in the Republican party’s long drawn-out national suicide: “I’ve struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life […]
How can the government change the framework of choices that particular people are faced with so that their own small errors in risk perception don’t expose the whole of society?
So, here’s the question for today: How should we respond when people we admire make serious missteps? Just so there’s no confusion, I want to say right up front that […]
Who will you put your money on — Richard Brandson, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk?
The 2012 election is officially over, and it was glorious. Barack Obama and the Democrats have delivered what one of our elder statesmen once referred to as “a thumping” to […]
Willpower is a limited resource easily drained by everyday activity.
As shown by this map, the next presidential election will not be decided by 50 states, but by just 11 – the so-called ‘swing states’, that could still go either way.
Every May brings with it a new crop of college graduation speeches. This spring, few (maybe none) were as though-provoking as multimedia artist Laurie Anderson’s at the School of Visual […]
On a late winter day in 1922, the sound of a gun shot resounded with a loud boom in the hills surrounding the house of three-year-old Edgar Curtis. The sound itself wasn’t out of the ordinary, since the Curtises lived near a firing range. What was extraordinary was the question the boy turned to ask his mother: “What is that big, black noise?”
The “endowment effect” explains our irrational tendency to overvalue something just because we own it.
Corey Milne of WhatCulture.com doesn’t think ‘feminism’ belongs in video games – alongside sex, BDSM, infanticide and so on. As a man, whenever someone mentions feminism I reply with a […]
William Shakespeare: Playwright, language innovator, father of product placement
A new meme is emerging in the blogosphere: Obama as the “imperial president.” From the left, Tom Egelhardt claims Obama “has the powers previously associated with the gods” while Steve […]
President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation’s massive and destructive wealth inequality.
I’m the only one who can get you out of the situation that you’re in.
With state and local governments still suffering from a persistent deficit of tax revenues due to the moribund economic recovery, smart politicians are looking ahead and lobbying for spaceport development […]