Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.

HOBOKEN, OCTOBER 4, 2026.  Last week a colleague at Stevens Institute, Smaran Dayal, gave a talk that stirred up memories from a previous life. From 1975 to 1980, I lived in Denver, painted hous...

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 29, 2026.   It’s not easy being wishy washy. I teeter on the fence, arms outstretched, struggling to keep my balance, while on either side fanatics filled with passionate inten...

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 22, 2026.   Artificial intelligence freaks me out . Have I made that clear ? So imagine my reaction to the following email from an “AI agent” named “Wren.” Wait, first let m...

Multicancer early detection tests What we know/ What we don't Access vs Payment

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 22, 2026.   Artificial intelligence freaks me out . Have I made that clear ? So imagine my reaction to the following email from an “AI agent” named “Wren.” Wait, first let m...

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 19, 2026.   To mark the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, 2,977 drones, one for each person killed, flew into the sky over Manhattan and formed outlines of the Twi...

JERSEY CITY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2026.  If I was a real journalist, I’d review Vinay Prasad’s entire oeuvre, including his book Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer. I’...

Fluid dynamics and an industrial midnight drama

YouTube video by Sabine Hossenfelder

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 4, 2026.   This fall I’m teaching two sections of a required humanities course designed to help first-year students read and write at the college level, whatever that means. Pr...

HOBOKEN, SEPTEMBER 4, 2026.   This fall I’m teaching two sections of a required humanities course that helps first-year students read and write at the college level, whatever that means. Professo...

JERSEY CITY, AUGUST 31, 2026 .  A grieving friend has me brooding over freedom’s downside. I’ll call him Zeke to preserve his privacy. We’ve known each other since childhood, and we have a lot in...

An article in which I attempt to criticize Merck, Moderna, Wall Street, the Media, and RFK Jr in under 700 words

HOBOKEN (DUH), AUGUST 21, 2026 . A year ago, inspired by the prose-poem Paterson , I set out to compose an epic celebration of Ho-Ho-Hoboken, which is an intrinsically comical synecdoche for the ...

PATERSON, NEW JERSEY, AUGUST 18, 2026.   I’m Adam, 25-year-old Uber driver, live in studio apartment over auto-parts store in Paterson, New Jersey. Smart, self-educated, ChatGPT, my personal tuto...

March 1, 2024. Like great art, great thought experiments have implications unintended by their creators. Take philosopher John Searle’s  Chinese room experiment . Searle concocted it to convinc...

AI on everyone's mind

WAUWINET, AUGUST 14, 2026.   I’m in a hospital room looking at a 21-year-old man looking at a laptop flashing images of action heroes, including the cinematic boxer “Rocky.” Cables loop from the ...

Its costs and risks are gigantic. Its benefits, unproven.

WAUWINET, AUGUST 6, 2026.   My effort to learn how machines learn has me mulling over “supervision.” A lot lurks behind that bland term. In Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Moder...

HOBOKEN, JULY 31, 2026.  Blame this column on Tyler and Joe, retired professors of environmental science (Tyler) and neuroscience (Joe), whom I met recently for dinner and conversation. Our powwo...

HOBOKEN, JULY 26, 2026. The Odyssey keeps haunting me, just as Zendaya haunts poor Matt Damon. I fear my denunciation of Nolan’s flick reflects my envy of Odysseus. He’s a great man, I’m a little...

A rant

JERSEY CITY, JULY 22, 2026.   Fuck men who do bad things and then whine about how bad they feel. They’re not heroes. That’s my reaction to The Odyssey . Let me back up a bit. Christopher Nolan ...

HOBOKEN, JULY 18, 2026.  In December 1985, I visited the Nevada Test Site the day before scientists detonated a nuclear device in a tunnel bored into the side of a mountain. I went to Nevada bec...

YouTube video by Everything Playbook

HOBOKEN, JULY 13, 2026. I shouldn’t write a eulogy for something that’s not dead. But I fear for the future of Scientific American --and science journalism as a whole. Attention must be paid. On Ju...

HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025.  I spent last week in Philadelphia at “Rat Fest,” whose attendees share an enthusiasm for “ critical rationalism , ” Karl Popper and David Deutsch. Rat...

HOBOKEN, JULY 3, 2026.   Before the play begins, I’m in a nostalgic, pleasantly melancholic mood. Then that opening scene whacks me across the face, as if to say, Wake up, you old fool, pay atte...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 28, 2026.   Great art, like “Death of a Salesman,” always speaks to us, but what we hear can change. Vicki somehow got us tickets to the acclaimed revival of the 1949 play, whi...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 24, 2026.  I think I’ve solved my AI dilemma. On the one hand: The ongoing explosion of AI is the biggest science story of my career. What’s bigger? The Bomb? Climate change? You c...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 20, 2026.   A novel written in late 19th-century Russia has me mulling over my moral obligations in 21st-century America. The novel is Tolstoy’s Resurrection . I love Tolstoy’s ma...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 20, 2026.   A novel written in late 19th-century Russia has me mulling over my moral obligations in 21st-century America. The novel is Tolstoy’s Resurrection . I love Tolstoy’s ma...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 14, 2026.   It’s hard, no, impossible, to keep up with the flood of rants, I mean reflections, on how AI is corrupting, I mean affecting, science and education. So I’ll just mention...

HOBOKEN, JUNE 4, 2026.   What counts as a genuine mystery, that’s worth pondering, versus a pseudo-mystery, that isn’t? I’ve been contemplating this puzzle (meta-mystery?) since touring Scotland ...

DUBLIN*, MAY 25, 2026.  As Josh our guide stands on the stoop of yet another building that Joyce described in his fiction, a gaunt grizzled Irishman elbows his way into our group and yells… Wait...

HOBOKEN, MAY 21, 2026.  What do you call someone who opines on ultracrepidarians? An ultra-ultracrepidarian. I’m compelled to blather a bit more on ultracrepidarianism, the subject of my last...

YouTube video by Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton

HOBOKEN, MAY 15, 2026.  “Where on earth did you come across that ‘Dream of the Fisherman's Wife’?,” Jim emails me after reading my column on the “ fluidity” of sex and love . “Perhaps the most e...

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise cloud communications.

HOBOKEN, MAY 4, 2026.   During the Q&A, a librarian says she likes Emily Bender’s point that language brainwashes us to accept “artificial intelligence .” The librarian asks Bender, a fi...