• "Minding Paul Allen," Philanthropy, Fall 2011.
   
• "The Problem with 'Friendly' Artificial Intelligence" (with Ari N. Schulman), The New Atlantis, Summer 2011.

I grew up in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey.

I moved to Washington in 1995 to study political science at American University. I've worked on Capitol Hill and for various think tanks, and also in a corporate lobbying office and as a consultant.

In 2003, I helped found a quarterly journal called The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society, published by the Center for the Study of Technology and Society in partnership with the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) and the Witherspoon Institute. I was the journal's managing editor for four years, and took over as editor in 2007. I am also a fellow at EPPC, and a contributing editor to both National Affairs and Current.

• "Bachmann's Dangerous Flirtation with the Anti-Vaccine Movement," National Review Online, September 13, 2011.
   
• "Stem Cells, Life, and the Law" (with Yuval Levin), National Review Online, August 25, 2010.
   
• "The Human Genome and the Human Being," National Review Online, August 9, 2010.
   
• "Breakthrough," Philanthropy, Winter 2010, pp. 26-36. [See also the letters section of the Summer 2010 issue of Philanthropy.]
   
• "Feynman and the Futurists," Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2010.
     
• "When Folly is Forever," Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2009.
   
• "Conservatives in Space," National Review Online, August 6, 2009.
    
• "Stem Cells, Science, and Ethics," National Review Online, March 9, 2009.
     
• "Science and the Obama Administration," The New Atlantis, Winter 2009, pp. 9-12.
    
• "The Synapse and the Soul," Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2008, p. A19.
     
• "Redeeming NASA," National Review Online, February 4, 2008.
     
• "March of the Machines," Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2007, p. D7.
     
• "Nanoethics as a Discipline?," The New Atlantis, Winter 2007, pp. 55-67. [See also "Debating Nanoethics," The New Atlantis, Summer 2007, pp. 5-14.]
     
• "The Age of Neuroelectronics," The New Atlantis, Winter 2006, pp. 4-41.
     
• "A Vast Conspiracy?" National Review, October 10, 2005, pp. 48-49.
     
• "Artifice and Artistry: Can Robots Be Creative?" In Character, Volume 1, Number 3, Spring 2005, pp. 68-77.
     
• Some blogging on nanotechnology I did from the National Academy of Sciences: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Feb. 9-11, 2005).
     
• My video tribute to Iraq's brave voters, January 30, 2005.
     
• "Science and Congress," The New Atlantis, Number 7, Fall 2004/Winter 2005, pp. 19-50.
     
• Liveblogging from the Foresight Institute's 2004 Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology (October 22-24, 2004), with video and pictures.
     
• "Too Much Spotty Thinking," The New York Sun, July 29, 2004.
     
• "Bush's NASA Revolution," National Review Online, July 20, 2004.
     
• "The Nanotech Schism," The New Atlantis, Winter 2004, pp. 101-103.
     
• "The Right Plan," The New Atlantis, Winter 2004, pp. 86-90. [See also the debate I moderated on February 5, 2004 between Robert Park, a vocal critic of all manned spaceflight, and Robert Zubrin, a proponent of ambitious human activity in space. You can read the transcript and see pictures by clicking here. Their remarks were edited into articles in the Winter 2004 issue of The New Atlantis: Park on "The Virtual Astronaut" and Zubrin on "The Human Explorer."]
     
• "The Red Planet: Reaching Out to Mars," The Weekly Standard, issue dated February 2, 2004.
     
• "Facing NASA's Earthbound Critics," The American Enterprise Online, January 22, 2004.
     
• "NASA and Space Exploration," Washington Journal, C-SPAN, January 10, 2004.
     
• "Mission to Mars," National Review Online, January 9, 2004.
     
• "The Alien Question," National Review Online, January 7, 2004. [This is a review of The Holy Land by Robert Zubrin.]
     
• "A New Vision for NASA," The New Atlantis, Fall 2003, pp. 3-22.
     
• "The Nanotechnology Revolution," The New Atlantis, Summer 2003, pp. 17-34.
     
• "Commemorating Attacks," National Review Online, September 6, 2002.
     
• "Traficant Gets Beamed Out," National Review Online, July 26, 2002.
     
• After the Florida screw-up on Election Day in 2000, I created a presidential election "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" site called Election 2000 Final Decision. (It was mentioned in a few newspaper articles.) It's interesting to revisit it now — as a reminder of the gap between how different an event appears while it is happening and later in our recollection. Many of the contingencies I outlined that seemed plausible at the time now sound plain silly.
     
• The speech I delivered at American University's 1999 commencement ceremony (pdf).

I can be reached at my office at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

1730 M St., NW  Suite 910
Washington, D.C.  20036
(202) 682-1200

Site created 10 June 1999. Last updated 20 November 2011.