Um. Am I the only one who sees an obvious problem with this theory? And yet, the obvious problem is not brought up in the article and no one's brought it up in the comments either ( Read more... )

As John McCain keeps beating the drums of war in favor of intervening in Syria -- in opposition to the White House's more intelligent strategy of working with other countries to bring about some sort of peace -- it's worth noting a double standard in how we use our resources ( Read more... )

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  Well, about those flying cars -- back to the drawing board.
  


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  Wired magazine has written an interesting profile of neuroscientist Henry Markam. If you haven't heard of Markam, he's one of those guys whose ideas about the future of technology make TED talks seem almost bland. Four years after he gave his own TED talk where, among other things, he ( Read more... )

Just listened to a radio interview with science writer Annalee Newitz, whose many projects include founding the science news website io9.com. Her new book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, is scheduled to be released next week and seems like an intriguing read ( Read more... )

I discovered this book yesterday while I was browsing at the neighborhood library. As a long-time procrastinator, I decided to get it so I can see if there's anything helpful in it.

So is there a cure for procrastination after all? I'll find out later.

1. One of my favourite ways of spending late nights during the week is listening to the BBC World Service on our local NPR station. They often have hour-long programmes devoted to certain specific themes. Last week, they had a show about youth around the world and a large part of tonight's show was -- in reaction to the last-minute retreat from ( Read more... )

From the science of food to the depths of space to doomsday weapons and the zombie apocalypse -- this week's Science Friday has a little bit of everything.

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  They're doing odd things with food these days. Working out of a lab at Texas Tech University, a company called MicroZap has invented a process for making bread last up to sixty days without ( Read more... )

I've been reading Joshua Holland's The Fifteen Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything Else the Right Doesn't Want You To Know About Taxes, Jobs, and Corporate America). Even as voracious a reader as I am, I rarely describe a non-fiction book as something you don't want to put down, but this one certainly qualifies. Everyone should read ( Read more... )

It's hard to predict the future. While that should go without saying, many people naturally believe that they have an intuitive grasp of the future. Partly this is because we perceive our journey from the present to the future as a straightforward linear progression that we can easily wrap our heads around ( Read more... )

Possible Hunger Games spoilers beyond this point. Skip if you haven't read Book 1 and plan to.

In The Hunger Games, the burden of the games falls most heavily on the lower classes, who are often forced to have their names entered into the reaping multiple times in order to obtain extra food and supplies for their families. By the time a child ( Read more... )