# science
Peer review isn't perfect. But it's still our best hope for quality science and catching errors and frauds with a few small, but meaningful tweaks.
# tech
Another day, another Singularitarian idea for measuring artificial intelligence, this time, through statistical problem solving.
# oddities
A satirical customer complaint about prayer shines a light on the problem with telling people you can speak to a deity able to grant your desires in return for obedience and reverence.
# tech
A new way of creating positrons hints at a potential shortcut towards antimatter engines. But we're still a long way off from such spacecraft...
# astrobiology
As soothing as it may seem, it's very, very, very unlikely there's a union of various alien species that imposes an interstellar order.
# space
While we'd need to generate an immense amount of energy to power a warp drive, there are events in this universe with that kind of energy output...
# oddities
Tim Minchin's famous beat poem about a woo-ey dinner guest is getting made into a short film.
# tech
The Tau Zero Foundation has a radical plan for exploring interstellar space with an extreme spaceship. Problem is, it might not be radical enough.
# sex
California declined federal funds to teach abstinence-only sex ed. The result? Teen pregnancies are down to their lowest level ever.
# tech
Engineers are using evolutionary algorithms to design new ion engines for spacecraft.
# science
John Horgan is on the warpath against Craig Venter because... the media prominently covered Venter's latest breakthrough with synthetic life?
# evolution
A study of how proteins are encoded and translated across a dozen species shows that life on Earth had only one population of universal common ancestors.
# science
We still have no idea how quantum entanglement works, but we know it's much, much faster than the speed of light...
# evolution
Both brains and microchips try to find the most efficient way to conduct electrical signals. And that has a profound effect on how brains grow and evolve.
# oddities
The modern world needs blasphemy not just as abstract right, but being actively exercised when the occasion calls for it.
