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Big ideas in the news from around the web
The governing body of the Catholic Church, The Holy See, is often treated as a sovereign nation, giving it outsize political influence among the world's religions, write Kal Raustiala and Lara Stemple. This practice has long been bad for women's equality, gay rights, and reproductive freedom, they ...
Republicans have been giddy about their prospects in the midterm elections, but Democrats could be saved if the economy recovers over the summer, writes James Surowiecki. Voters have short memories. "But economies aren’t machines. The Democrats will have to spend the next seven months much the way ...
After 50 years of searching for intelligent life in outer space, astronomers still haven't made contact with extraterrestrials. "Does that mean we are alone in the universe after all? Or might we be looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time?" asks Paul Davies. He notes that ...
The infamous English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge "was also a metacognitive theorist far ahead of his time," writes David Schneider. "Specifically, from around 1796 to about 1808, Coleridge was incessantly burying into four related questions: how does perception work; how does the mind ...
Research has found that over time stress can be very harmful to the brain, draining it of a certain protein involved with helping neurons in the hippocampus -- affecting memory, mood, and cognition. "The findings suggest that BDNF is one of the proteins that play a role in mediating the brain's ...
Roland Martin makes the case that Confederate soldiers in the Civil War were domestic terrorists -- and shouldn't be honored any more than we honor Muslim extremists who try to kill Americans. "The fundamental problem with extremism is that when you're on the side that is fanatical, all of your ...
A beckoning light; a feeling of transcendence: these are two characteristics of a near-death experience that new research suggests may relate to amounts of certain chemicals in the blood. "The phenomenon known as 'near-death experience' is the stuff of hospital dramas, a dramatic conceit for movies ...
Atheist social groups are sprouting up more than ever across college campuses emphasizing tolerance and proselytizing like their religious brethren. "Twenty years ago a public meeting of atheists and their allies at a large public university — attended by a friendly Methodist pastor, no less — would ...
In the absence of a strong federal response to record unemployment rates, local communities and cities like Cleveland, OH are the ones innovating to create jobs for their citizens. "To be unemployed in the US – to lose your identity as a consumer in an economy where 70 per cent of all activity is ...
Though many heads of state were on the plane crash that killed the President of Poland, the political machinery necessary to govern remains in place; an election must be held in 60 days. "Experts say the deaths of senior military chiefs in Saturday's plane crash could have more serious implications ...
Following some high-level diplomacy, Secretary of State Clinton says Cuba refuses to cooperate with the U.S. to preserve it as a scapegoat for Cuba's failures. "Cuba's response to recent US efforts to improve relations had revealed 'an intransigent, entrenched regime' in Havana, said the US ...
Russia is threatening stop American families from adopting Russian orphans after a Tennessee family sent its adopted Russian son back to Moscow unaccompanied, save for a written letter. "Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a ...
As a result of burgeoning domestic consumer demand, China posted a rare trade deficit in March but any significant effects are likely to be temporary. "China posted its first trade deficit in six years in March even as the yuan stayed pegged to the dollar, aiding government efforts to play down the ...
A decade's old computing error has resulted in 800,000 U.K. organ donor files being mistakenly recorded; organs have been harvested without permission or the wrong ones taken. "Donors can give permission for any of their organs to be taken, or provide more specific agreements. A glitch in the system ...
Less labor intensive and more profitable per acre, more marijuana is being grown in Afghanistan increasing the Taliban's profit from the drug trade. "Afghanistan, already the world's top opium supplier, is now the world's biggest producer of cannabis, according to United Nations drug experts. There ...