Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Dr. Larry Brilliant talks about how smallpox was finally eradicated from the planet. In a conversational style that belies the deadly seriousness of his subject, he describes the dangers of pandemic disease, and offers a solution in his dramatic TED Prize wish, a plan to use the Internet to help prevent the next pandemic. (Contains strong images.)
Continue reading Larry Brilliant: TED Prize wish: Help stop the next pandemic
Author Robert Wright explains “non-zero-sumness,” a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says — but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the “game.” Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress — a move toward empathy — is our only hope.
Continue reading Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict
Why is there no Birth Control Pill for men?This latest “Ask a ScienceBlogger” question will certainly engender a wide range of responses from the Scienceblogs.com team. Answers may address physiology, endocrinology, pharmacology, economics, and other areas of scientific thinking and practice. The answer I’d like to propose can be summed up in two closely linked words pilfered from the question itself: Continue reading Why is There no Birth Control Pill for Men?
Creationist efforts to pull one of the nation’s best biology textbooks were crushed when the school board voted, 9 to 7, to keep using the book. Continue reading Ding Dong: South Carolina Textbook Fight Over