Please welcome Guest Blogger, Philip Cohen.  Cohen is  a sociology professor at University of South Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He blogs at the Huffington Post and at his own blog, Family Inequality.  He asked some questions about the r...

The federal government’s seventh quarterly report to Parliament on Canadian military and development work in Afghanistan was tabled late yesterday without fanfare. These reports have become routine, but through the bland, bureaucrat...

You can now listen to the recent debate between Cardinal George Pell and Dan Barker. It will convince you that the Catholic church is totally lacking in any intellectual criterion for appointing cardinals. Practically the first wor...

When Google started "suggesting" the most popular search phrases below its query box, I was creeped out. Especially when I saw what it suggests for "is Obama". Yes, I was happier when I didn't know what other people were typing int...

The Congressional Budget Office numbers aren’t in yet, but House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer assures wary legislators that health care reform will save billions, even trillions, over the next 20 years. His statement comes as House D...

The Ig Nobel Tour of the UK rolls, bounces and hopscotches into London tonight, having frolicked yesterday in Liverpool. Things start at 6:00 pm at Imperial College London. This event is now fully booked. (But… It’s possible that t...

Kent Hovind's infamous alma mater has put together a collection of responses because they are "under attack!" Only they aren't—they're being laughed at. And whoa, these pages are even more hilarious. (Warning: all of the links below...

A new paper is pushing back the time of initial occupation of Flores by hominins to at least 1.0 million years ago. Adam Brumm and colleagues (2010) are reporting that they've found stone tools in a site from the Soa Basin of Flore...

This has been all over the news the last couple of days: A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants di...

Researchers in Australia have demonstrated that blocking a certain protein can reduce or prevent cigarette smoke-induced lung inflammation in mice. Inflammation underlies the disease process of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ...

These are the occupations on the opposite extremes of the liberal-conservative spectrum based on their campaign contributions according to research by Adam Bonica. As Andy put it: the conventional wisdom isn’t always wrong, even aft...

Hat tip to Steve...

The comment that has stirred up the most condemnation from the press is Richard Dawkins' mention of "Pope…Nazi," which everyone assumes was about the current Pope. Wrong. Everyone knows the current Pope is most properly addressed as...

With President Barack Obama sending at least 30,000 additional American troops to knock the Taliban off-balance and a U.S.-led offensive in Helmand province, a better understanding of today’s Taliban is central to the effort to ...

While I was on blogcation, I got an email from the watchdog group Stinky Journalism, complaining that prominent science author and professor Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel) was in the hot seat again. (You may remembe...

As some of you might know, all of my 'free' time last month was eaten up by a major project (a book chapter) that had a very tight deadline. This meant no time whatsoever for such stuff as blog-writing, hence the (mostly) recycled b...

There's almost no on answering the Collective Imagination Question today, so this is your chance! Click here. And while you are over there, have a look at my latest post on Japanese Ring Tone Therapy. Read the comments on this p...

And Evacuation Day, which truly is a silly holiday, is a wonderful way to allow everybody to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day without violating all that church and state stuff. One unique Massachusetts tradition is that, on this day, ...

Mindy Belloff of the Intima Press has a fascinating inside look at the creation of a Declaration of Independence reprint (this of Mary Katharine Goddard's 1777 version). I've seen a copy of Belloff's production, and it's quite lovel...