Are we organisms or living ecosystems? Did you know that there is more bacteria in your body than there is, well, anything else? Well it’s true: they’re in our digestive tract, all over our skin, in our teeth, on our tongue, and have even fathered 40 of our own human genes. Leading scientists are already [...]

The Final Frontier: Will the search for alien life be over by 2025? For years, Star Trek and other sci-fi gadgets have lept out of the screen and into our lives. But while mobile phones, video-conferencing, real-time systems monitoring and online collaboration are now staples of modern life,  alien life has remained a fixture in [...]

Transcendent Man: Kurzweil outlines the future in his first documentary film By the time Al Gore released his Oscar winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth“, few skeptics were left that the world’s climate was changing. Now, Ray Kurzweil – one of the most prolific inventors of the 20th century -  is releasing an eminent documentary of [...]

Single Payer supporters & doctors excluded from a Senate finance committee 'roundtable' on healthcare reform. The healthcare industries – insurance and pharmaceutical companies – have enjoyed similar successes to the auto, food, oil and financial industries in lobbying publically elected representatives to remove legislation that provides value and protection to consumers. But once again, the [...]

Digital news is a classic case of disruptive innovation – Arianna Huffington, May 2009 There was a time when newspapers were at the pinnacle of information technology. The influence of the newspaper on the evolution of human consciousness is not to be underestimated; for a start, its ability to be rewritten every day helped dilute [...]

Beware of those who answer a closed question with a monologue of platitudes in a vain effort to disagree with something they clearly believe. Enter Mike Pence (R, Ind.), another politician who prostitutes his leadership to his political contributors. Many religious organizations, and their political devotees, prefer to pontificate that ancient documents — themselves politically [...]

Originally built by the US military, the internet is now an essential element of the developed world. The EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, the EU’s Internet chief, called for the severing of links between ICANN and the U.S. government. Currently ICANN operates under an agreement with the Commerce Department, and the United States is the only [...]

The NFL shares revenues and allows weaker teams pick new young players first. Upon taking over in 1960, Pete Rozelle persuaded NFL team owners — most notably Carroll Rosenbloom of the Colts, and George Preston Marshall of the Redskins — to agree to share revenues between teams. His business model was essentially a system that [...]

If there’s one area where regulation has its most tangible impact, it’s surely the surface area of our bellies. Unfortunately for 1 billion humans, regulation has failed. But is this just down to individual choices, or is the food industry in need of better regulation? The WHO suggests that creating supportive population-based environments through public [...]

Once again we turn to a comedy program for a poignant debate of philosophical issues. The subject: Torture. During World War II, the Japanese tortured US soldiers in the fear that America was going to drop the Atomic bomb on their cities. After this war, Japanese soldiers were prosecuted for the same acts that the [...]