A newly released video captures Felix Baumgartner's world record-setting free fall back to Earth from the edge of space, from his perspective. 

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them." – Boris Pasternak (born on this date in 1890)

Two amazing sights of the night sky captured together! “It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” -Woodrow Wilson […]

Her is quite the meticulous and creepily seductive criticism of our techno-orientation toward transhumanism.  It is the dystopian film of our time, a haunting glimpse at the near future. The transhumanist theory is […]

Is it my cranky imagination or does Valentine’s Day become more of a big deal every year? All of the second-tier holidays seem to have gotten elevated in the last […]

There’s something deeply and profoundly philosophical about the gradually decline of the Europeans: It’s going on for over a century now. MOST observers will have heard about the latest US […]

The highlights of the greatest Winter Constellation of them all. “I discerned huge Orion, driving wild beasts together over the field of asphodel, the very ones that he once had killed […]

A friend of mine recently posted a link to one of the hilarious articles detailing the bone-headed Olympic Games preparations in Sochi and asked, tongue not really in cheek, “Did no […]

BEIJING AND TOKYO – The Chunjie celebrations have come to an end this week and, starting from next Monday, we can expect Beijing’s political retaliations against Tokyo and Manila for […]

Ultimately, your lifetime is a sum of actions, experiences and how you spent your time. How would you wish to be remembered?

The future of humanity depends on it. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach […]

A spellbinding case of justified paranoia is documented this week in the New Yorker. Researcher Tyrone Hayes upset the manufacturer of the second most popular herbicide in the US (since […]

Not many art stories make the cover of both TIME and Newsweek in the same week, but the revelation of Andrew Wyeth’s infamous “Helga Paintings” in 1986 caused a news […]

Critics contend that multiple-choice tests only encourage two things: rote memorization and hand-eye coordination.

Michael Sandel: I think the reason we have such an impoverished public debate is that we are too reluctant to take on hard controversial, but important moral questions that really go to the heart of the question of what kind of society do we want to live in. 

"If all you do is mock the people who disagree with you, you miss your chance to honestly engage with them, learn about where they come from, and — just maybe — teach them a little piece of something that they might not have known before."

It’s one of the most bragged-about vehicle specs of any racing enthusiast. But what, exactly, does it mean? “Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front of the car.Oversteer […]

Ethan Nadelmann describes the War on Drugs as a prime example of the risk perception gap becoming a risk in and of itself.

Inevitably drug laws will be disproportionately enforced against the poor, younger and darker-skinned members of society.

Gurbaksh Chahal: At 16, the first person I hired was my older brother. I knew I could trust him implicitly and he’d already been my confidante and helper.