Buy Happiness
How to Buy Happiness by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. The new science of spending points to a surprising conclusion: How we use our money may matter as much or more than how much of it we’ve got. Read the [...]
Really?
Is Richard Dawkins Really the World’s Leading Intellectual? by David Wolpe. Prospect magazine just named the 65 leading intellectuals in the world. First on the list was Richard Dawkins, known for his work in biology and for his polemics against [...]
Confront?
Will Science Journalists Ever Confront Democrats? by Alex B. Berezow. Slate’s Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, doesn’t shy away from a good rant every now and then, often focusing his wrath on scientifically clueless politicians. I admit to doing the same. [...]
Disputed
Disputed Results a Fresh Blow for Social Psychology by Alison Abbott. Failure to replicate intelligence-priming effects ignites row in research community. More at Nature.
Vexed
Can Science Lead to Faith? by Gary Marcus. The relationship between science and religion has always been vexed. Most scientists I know are nonbelievers, convinced that there is no deity, or at least that there is no convincing evidence of [...]
BBT
“The Big Bang Theory” Meets Its Maker by Ken Masugi. “The Big Bang Theory” is a highly popular tv sitcom focusing on the love and social lives of young Caltech scientists and their glowingly attractive next-door neighbor, part-time actress and [...]
War
Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer by Peggy Orenstein. According to Todd Tuttle, chief of the division of surgical oncology at the University of Minnesota and lead author of a study on prophylactic mastectomy published in The Journal of Clinical [...]
Confession
I’m a Catholic, and I Have a Confession: I Love Richard Dawkins by Ed West. What’s strange is that so many people who had nothing to say to years of Dawkins slamming Christianity now act offended that he’s criticising Islam [...]
Spectrum
Mental Health: On the Spectrum by David Adam. David Kupfer is a modern-day heretic. A psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, Kupfer, has spent the past six years directing the revision of a book commonly referred to as [...]
Short Circuit
The Electric Car’s Short Circuit by Bjørn Lomborg. For decades, the idea of the electric car has captured the imaginations of innovators – including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison more than a century ago. Celebrities, pundits, and political leaders alike [...]
Unexpected
Salon interviews Abraham Morgentaler. author of a new book (released today), Why Men Fake It: The Totally Unexpected Truth About Men and Sex.
Cracking?
Lawrence Solomon: Climate Changing for Global Warming Journalists The overwhelming consensus on global warming among journalists may be cracking. Last week, the world’s most prestigious newsmagazine – The Economist – backed away from its past alarmist position, saying that “If [...]
Higgs
Atheist Prof. Peter Higgs: Stop Calling Higgs Boson the ‘God Particle’ by David Edwards. Professor Peter Higgs said recently that there is no God and so people should stop referring to the theoretical partial that bears his name as the [...]
Anxiety
Our Age of Anxiety by Elaine Showalter. In his controversial book American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences (1881), the neurologist George M. Beard proclaimed that Americans in the 19th century led all civilized nations in their susceptibility to nervous, anxious, [...]
Americans
Why Americans Love Creationism by Karl Giberson. I was sobered while watching a recent conversation on HuffPost Live about America’s troubled conversation over origins. Nominally about recent attempts in Louisiana to get creationism into the public schools, the wide-ranging conversation [...]
Predict?
Can the Doomsday Argument Predict Our Odds of Survival? by George Dvorsky. The classic form of the Doomsday Argument says it’s more likely that we’re closer to the end of our civilization than the beginning. In other words, apocalyptic destruction [...]
Bittman
The New York Times’ Mark Bittman Offers Poisoned Food For Thought by Henry I. Miller. New York Times food writer Mark Bittman seems to have a “thing” about biotechnology — the same sort of thing that Creationists have about Darwinism. [...]
Parents
No Big Deal, but This Researcher’s Theory Explains Everything About How Americans Parent by Nicholas Day. New parenthood is a desperate search for certainty: When you start knowing nothing, you are desperate to know something. And when you finally figure [...]
Duped
Scientific Articles Accepted (Personal Checks, Too) by Gina Kolata. The scientists who were recruited to appear at a conference called Entomology-2013 thought they had been selected to make a presentation to the leading professional association of scientists who study insects. [...]
Models
Here’s an excerpt from Mapping the Origins Debate: Six Models of the Beginning of Everything by Gerald Rau.