Just days after the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13, the iconic mask of Guy Fawkes appeared – again – in two videos released in French by the hacktivist techno-social collective Anonymous. This time, they declared a total war on the Islamic State, or ISIS,...

On December 21, the company SpaceX made history by successfully launching a rocket and returning it to a safe landing on Earth. It’s also the day that SpaceX founder Elon Musk was nominated for a Luddite Award.

The nomination came as part of a campaign by the Information...

“The end of television” is a headline that’s been liberally thrown around for the past 15 years.

Indeed, the past year saw audiences becoming more and more amenable to adopting new ways to watch TV shows, with live audiences for broadcast and cable programs declin...

In the American West, unprecedented droughts have caused extreme water shortages. The current drought in California and across the West is entering its fourth year, with precipitation and water storage reaching record low levels.

Such drought and water scarcity are only likely to...

More than a thousand times farther from Earth than the moon, farther even than the sun, an extraordinary extraterrestrial expedition is taking place. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is exploring dwarf planet...

Walking across campus to my office each morning this semester, I’ve found it hard to ignore the growing number of students using hoverboards to get around. These two-wheel self-balancing boards (they don’t really hover, Back-to-the-Future-style) are one of the hottest...

There are many social norms that dictate gift-giving, including when, how and what to give as gifts.

Interestingly, these norms don’t seem to be about making sure that recipients get the gifts they want. What makes for a good or bad gift often differs in the eyes of...

In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd.

According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the...

When a customer walks into a jewelry store, weddings or special occasions are usually front of mind. Rarely does that customer think of where the jewelry comes from, let alone its social and environmental costs.

The tragedy of “blood diamonds” – illegally...

What happens when someone claims to have proved a famous conjecture? Well, it depends. When a paper is submitted, the journal editor will pass it off to a respected expert for examination. That referee will then scan the paper looking for a significant new idea. If there...