Dear TV and Movie Producer Person, I realize that you receive letters all the time complaining about the gratuitous sex and violence on television and in movies. This is not one of those letters. In…

Having myself thought I was going insane at one point, I should be very careful in using the word "kook" about anybody. But have no fear; I'm libeling an entire state: California, of course. I don't…

Propaganda is normally associated with governments that are attempting to persuade or influence people for a particular political objective.  More formally it is defined as "the deliberate,…

As a freelance scientist, I find my Friday to-do lists are particularly eclectic.  A little backstory: I work as a freelance a) science writer and b) programmer in order to support A) my family…

So my friend's setting up her wireless network and asks me about names, and I randomly spout off the phrase "unicorn tentacles". Cause that's a great name for a wireless network. Then I started…

Political scientists from the University of Missouri say that the general public knows very little about foreign policy, and what they do know is based primarily on "rhetoric" from whatever president…

According to one historian, the anti-government rallies that made their way across the country last summer, known as tea parties, may explain more about Americans than their views on high taxes and…

Today, I learned from the Wall Street Journal that "frying cuttlefish" is Cantonese slang for being fired. As a result, cuttlefish fishing trips are deliberately misnamed squid fishing trips, to…

The recent financial meltdown was perhaps the biggest economic crisis since the great depression, and a team of economists says that current macroeconomic models used to diagnose and treat the causes…

Ignoring all of the likely reasons why Africa may see more civil wars in the future, a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that global warming…