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How did you learn the alphabet? Did it involve a picture book which taught you that “D stands for dog” and “B stands for bear,” each punctuated by cute images of animals? That’s how a normal person might do it, but the Puritans preferred scaring their children into literacy.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life just released a new report on the world’s Muslims. The survey covered 39 countries and the issues addressed by the study are clearly connected to the concerns raised on network news. Issues range from the implementation of sharia to popular culture, with some important attention given

Researchers have created a brain to brain interface (BBI for short). While that alone should be impressive enough, what comes next is astounding; it works between two different species: human and rat (see video below). BBI allowed a human brain to move a rat’s tail with about “94-percent accuracy.” The experiment involved a non-invasive,

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works John Brockman (Editor) Harper Perennial, 2013 432 pages (Kindle edition) Available Amazon

When we began The Discarded Image in 2009, the main purpose of the blog was to provide a place for Mindy (my co-contributor) and me to explore fresh perspectives on the world and its future. While that purpose has remained, we’ve discovered that our scope and interests have traveled a bit. So we’ve made

I don’t know about you, but I spent all of last week glued to Twitter, following the manhunt in Boston, the explosion in West Texas and the earthquake in China. I knew the Pulitzers had been announced (and that this year’s board had avoided last year’s misstep in the Fiction category) but until this

A few years ago we took what my wife and I called our “Literary Road Trip,” and ventured into the homes of a lot of famous New Englanders, like Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. (That’s a two-for, by the way, since their homes are next door to each other.) Emily Dickinson’s home was

I always love hyper-realistic robots and PETMAN (video above) recently caught my attention. His job is to test out chemical protection suits and their ability to seal-out dangerous contaminates. He definitely takes the strain off of human testers, as the video above shows, but if you met this chem-suit and gas-mask wearing robot on