Author: Charles Pineda

We seek novelty, but not too much.

Why our minds can be led astray about the tastes of wines.

The universe’s greatest sinkholes have no trouble swallowing anything—except themselves.

We didn’t say “break the Internet” back in 1999, but if we did we could certainly say that science-fiction author David Brin broke the Internet when he wrote in Salon that “Stars Wars belongs to our dark past. A long, tyrannical epoch of fear, illogic, despotism and demagoguery that our ancestors struggled desperately to overcome, […]

Welcome to sMars: Christiane Heinicke stands on a hillside southwest of the dome. The solar array that powers the habitat is to her right. To her left are the backup hydrogen fuel cells and the solar water heater.Photograph by Christiane Heinicke/Sheyna Gifford, 2015 For 6 crewmembers who have supposedly traveled 150 million miles—and were, beforehand, […]

The effects of centuries of natural disaster may be most obvious in Japanese culture.

I have two children, and they are a study in contrasts: My son works at a gym designing and building rock-climbing walls; In his spare time, he climbs them. My daughter is a Ph.D. student in immunology; In her spare time, she writes novels. My son is the sort of person you want around in […]

Epigenetics and behaviorism suggest the ancient Greeks were right.

The rush for success is driving science into a corner, apart from wider culture.

A step-by-step guide to True, False, and Random.