http://www.ted.com - In a preview of his next book, Steven Pinker takes on violence. We live in violent times, an era of heightened warfare, genocide and senseless crime. Or so we've come to believe. Pinker charts a history of violence from Biblical times through the present, and says modern society has a little less to feel guilty about.

I read the very interesting article in last month's Wired describing the writer's experience of getting a brain implant to combat the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. I kind of expect that sort of thing in Wired, but a few days later I ran across this first article of a series in the Vancouver Sun about a woman about to go through the whole ...