Why were the futurists of the mid-20th century so wrong? Where are the robots, undersea cities, home nuclear plants, meals in a pill, and moon colonies? Damn it, where’s my […]

Theoretically, greater safety measures may in fact cause people to take more risks—a phenomenon known as the Peltzman effect.

Many snakes and other legless critters have an extraordinary facility for self-knotting, and can tie and untie themselves with a dexterity that would leave a sailor or Boy Scout in awe.

At the beginning of the epidemic, there wasn’t a way to test for HIV in donated blood, and many infections were transmitted by transfusions—1,220 cases in the U.S. by the end of 1987.

The first order of business is to identify what family or tribe you belong to— in ancient times, and to a considerable extent now, these were the people who’d have your back.

Hawking says black holes “should be redefined as metastable bound states of the gravitational field,” which I take to mean they may not necessarily be the one-way ticket to oblivion previously assumed.