Why I Want My Students to Read Jared Diamond's Latest Blockbuster
During my seven years at Stevens Institute, I've often asked students to write a response to the following query: Would you rather have lived in the Stone Age than today?
Cross-Check
Critical views of science in the news
Are We Ready for a World in Which Everyone Spies on Everyone Else?
Recent events have me rethinking the benefits of a fully transparent world, in which everyone electronically monitors everyone else. In 2010, I blogged about my hopes that "grassroots spying" could help us create a safer, more just society, in which citizens can spy on people in power rather than just vice versa...
Need a New Year's Resolution? Choose to Believe In Free Will!
We're approaching the end of one year and the beginning of another, when people resolve to quit smoking, swill less booze, gobble less ice cream, jog every day, or every other day, work harder, or less hard, be nicer to kids, spouses, ex-spouses, co-workers, read more books, watch less TV, except Homeland , which is awesome ...
More Guns Have Not Produced More Killings, But We Still Need Gun Control
I've beaten up on opponents of gun control in posts published on the day of the Newtown massacre and again on Sunday. In both posts, I strongly implied that more guns mean more shootings...
Psychedelic Prophet of 2012 Doom Was Goofing! But For a Good Reason
It's the day before the doomsday, as supposedly prophesied by ancient Mayans. Scientific American has been dutifully mocking the prediction, while also cannily capitalizing on it by offering discounted subscriptions in an "End of the World Flash Sale." Brilliant!I figured I'd take advantage of apocalypse fever by reprinting something I posted last June about a prominent popularizer of the 2012 meme, psychedelic scholar-entertainer-guru- Scientific-American -fan Terence McKenna...
Question for Gun-Rights Fanatics: Have You No Sense of Decency?
I'm still brooding over the Connecticut massacre. Here are some points I'd like to add to those I raised in my column on Friday:One respondent to my previous post chided me for my inflammatory language...
Will Connecticut Massacre Give Politicians the Guts to Take on the Gun Lobby?
It's happened again: a lone gunman has carried out a massacre, this time in an elementary school in Newtown, CT. A young man killed 18 children and eight adults, reportedly including his mother, a teacher at the school, before taking his own life.And so once again I'm dragging out my plea for gun control, just as I did last summer, after James Holmes shot 12 people to death in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and in January 2011, after Jared Laughner killed six people and wounded 14 others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Arizona.Every time a deranged American male goes on a rampage, shooting down dozens of people, gun lovers trot out the familiar excuses: Guns don’t kill people, people do...
Can Engineers and Scientists Ever Master "Complexity"?
I'm pondering complexity again. The proximate cause is the December 11 launch at my school, Stevens Institute of Technology, of a Center for Complex Systems & Enterprises.
Nassim Taleb Is Annoying, but "Antifragile" Is Still Worth Reading
Nassim Nicholas Taleb can be a pain in the ass. After I invited him to speak at Stevens Institute of Technology a year ago, he made all kinds of demands about where, when and how the event should take place and be publicized—or rather, not publicized...
What Should We Do With Our Visions of Heaven and Hell?
Is heaven real? Eben Alexander thinks so. He is a neurosurgeon who learned his craft at Duke and honed it at Harvard. In 2008 he fell into a coma, his brain infected by bacterial meningitis...
Blog Index
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Anthropology in Practice
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Adventures in the good science of rock-breaking.
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A Blog About the Weird Wonderfulness of Life on Earth
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Exploring and celebrating diversity in science.
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