Science
The Un-Science of Radionics
To get a handle on a controversial, discredited, and generally bizarre medical technology called radionics, here’s a story about me as a horny teenager.
What Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper can Learn From Each Other
Besides loving church and hating science, the Prime Ministers of Australia and Canada have a lot in common—including awkward expense scandals.
The World's First Commercially Available Cyborg Is a Cyborg Cockroach
Next month, Backyard Brains will begin selling the Bluetooth RoboRoach, the first cyborg to be commercially available to the general public. Priced at $99.99, the product is cheap and simple to use. After a “brief surgery,” users attach an electronic...
Sorry Religions, Human Consciousness Is Just a Consequence of Evolution
Are we ordained by our creator or are we just delusional lumps of carbon and guts? Neuroscientist Michael Graziano concludes something closer to latter. But it’s not delusion that makes our brains aware. It’s a highly functional adaptive strategy.
Watching Three People Share a $384,000 Burger Is Surprisingly Boring
As the world’s population hurtles toward an estimated 9 billion by 2050, global food shortages are becoming a very real problem. It’s obvious that the meat industry as we know it is unsustainable, but for the vast majority of us, the prospect of...
How America Interrupted Wilhelm Reich's Orgasmic Utopia
In July of 1947, Dr. Wilhelm Reich—a brilliant but controversial psychoanalyst who had once been Freud’s most promising student, who had enraged the Nazis and the Stalinists as well as the psychoanalytic, medical, and scientific communities, who had...
Before Peter Gabriel Jammed with Monkeys, John C. Lilly Tripped with Dolphins
As Gabriel said recently, "If aliens do exist…we expect them to treat us as smart creatures that are worth listening to, and I would ask, 'like we have with the other species on this planet?'" It's pretty bleeding-edge (and bleeding-heart), but it owes...
The Government Is Retiring Hundreds of Chimps from Biomedical Research
I hate to paint with a broad brush here, but primates in America have horrible lives. Sure, there are your One Percenters like Koko and Bubbles the Chimp, but by and large, the US is one big Bergen-Belsen for our oldest living ancestors. The NIH has...
'OMNI' Magazine Will Rise Again
The magazine’s been out of print for 15 years, but while it lasted it was a gonzo blend of science and science fiction. It was sexy, irreverent, scarily prescient, and I never imagined that I'd find myself elbow-deep in the biggest 'OMNI' collection in...
The Weird Science of North Korea
North Korea's science policies disdain research for research's sake and focus on pragmatic stuff like breeding flowers, cooking and exporting meth, improving welding technology, and holding symposiums on how great Kim Jong Un is.
What Makes a Fart?
Did you know that no two farts are exactly alike? It's true. Farts are sort of like snowflakes in that regard.