Self-identified rational people take pride in the fact that they can't be easily manipulated, but of course that's the pride part of their dumb monkey brains talking. Here's an interesting study that measured whether hard-to-pronounce words were perceived as riskier than words that were easier to pr...

Das letzte Semester habe ich als Visiting Student im Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department des MIT verbracht. Was folgt ist der Versuch einer Zusammenfassung dessen, was ich in Cambridge getan und gelernt habe. Besonders wenn ich von dem berichte, was ich gelernt habe, wird vieles skizzenhaft blei...

Have you ever googled something and thought “If only I could just ask the computer this question instead of typing in keywords, sifting through pages and pages of crap and finally find THE ANSWER” buried in one of the web pages?” There has got to be a better way. Every science fict...

Stem Cell Stories, First Cats Now Dogs, Dirty Bombs and Old Bottles, X-ray Super Veggies, This Week in Dead People, and Justin Wants To Be A Pregnant Vegan....

Here’s one for Don and the Net Generation team to chew on or chew up. Baronness Susan Greenfield, a professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, has warned that the experience of growing up immersed in hyper-stimulating ...

The people at the Optemetry School wanted to look in my eyes, so they widened my pupils by paralyzing my pupil-contracting muscles--which also paralyzed my lens-contracting muscles because they are right next door. Due to compatibility with the architectural specification for Quadruped 1.0, a great ...

If you are interested in collective intelligence, consciousness, the global brain and the evolution of artificial intelligence and superhuman intelligence, you may want to see my talk at the 2008......

The End of the World, This Week in Evolution, Why Being an Astronaught Isn’t So Hip,Police and Non Lethal Weapons Don’t Mix, Recess Makes You Smarter, and Interview on Autism w/ Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen...

Tiny Eyes, Roving Mars, Feeling Secure, Vitamin Hopes, Alcoholic Assays, and an Interview w/ Scott Sigler re: Contagious....

The Top 11 Science Stories of 2008… Merry TWIS-mas!!!...