If the video above doesn’t have you marveling at the creativity of humanity, we feel for you: the 21st century is going to be rough.The Israeli company OrCam offers the latest proof that the tiny, embattled Middle Eastern state is a leader in world-class technology. OrCam has created a pair of eyeglasses that allows blind and […]

In this graph are contained the hopes and fears of the world’s petro-states. That black line represents the Brent price for a barrel of crude oil, a benchmark used for European, African, and Middle Eastern oil. Countries whose fiscal breakeven oil price—the price at which oil needs to be in order for the country to […]

The decline of democracy and popular disenchantment with democratic institutions have recently become hot topics in academic and think tank circles. Freedom House, in its annual Freedom in the World report released in January, cites a seventh consecutive year of decline in freedom around the world but cautions that the decline is not a precipitous […]

Syria’s civil war is bleeding over the border into its fragile neighbor to the west. As many as six people were killed in Tripoli, and dozens more were wounded. Reports suggest that snipers in the city center were to blame for some of the casualties. A dozen people were killed in fighting between Hezbollah guerrillas and […]

Public pension funds are some of the largest shareholders in the country, and increasingly they love to throw their weight around. That’s what we learn from the Manhattan Institute’s Proxy Monitor, at least, which reports that public employee pension funds in New York City and New York state are branching out into social activism issues […]

MOOCs are attracting resistance from professors across the country. In early May San Diego State’s philosophy department wrote an open letter to Harvard professor Michael Sandel, complaining that soon enough MOOCs like his popular online course on justice “will replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities.” The Duke faculty […]

Between crushing student debt and dim job prospects, the nation’s recent grads have every right to a bleak outlook on average. But their outlook isn’t actually uniformly bleak across the country. Here’s a list of ten cities where college grads are faring particularly well, with unemployment rates well below the national average. If you were reading us […]

Earth’s surface temperatures have defied the predictions of climate models for the past decade, coming in considerably cooler than expected. The climate science community is stumped about this. One possible explanation is that oceans are “storing” much of the heat that would otherwise have warmed the atmosphere. There are other possibilities as well. What this […]

The Obama administration keeps pressing that Russian reset button but the darn thing still won’t work. If Secretary of State John Kerry was hoping Russia’s recent transfer of weapons to Assad in Syria would be its last, he’s about to be disappointed. The Guardian reports that peace talks in Geneva jointly convened by the US […]

Are they extremists, as Erdoğan suggested? Are they activists organized by Turkey’s opposition parties? Are they “bums” and “looters”? Hippies? Kurds? Leftists? Anarchists? Soccer hooligans?What began as a peaceful sit-in to protect one of Istanbul’s last green parks has evolved over the past few days into huge street marches and battles between protesters and riot police. […]