The Metcalfe Institute at the University of Rhode Island has announced its 2008 Grantham Prize winners for environmental reporting. The series “Choking on Growth” by The NY Times on China […]
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Your brain doesn’t work as well as you think it does. At least that’s what psychologist Christopher Chabris argues in his new book “Invisible Gorillas,” which calls into question the […]
Actor and activist Judith Light, who has played a wide variety of major roles on and off the screen over the past three decades says that preparing for a role […]
Europe shocked as leaked map reveals secret plan for Belgian domination
This morning on Morning JoeNiall Ferguson compared General McChrystal to Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, a character uniquely immortalized by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s film (inspired […]
We need poetry in our lives. It is not a luxury. It is not only for an elite. And it does something that no other art form can do, even […]
What does the future look like? We essentially rely on science fiction thrillers to give us a taste of what lies ahead for humanity: Avatar; Iron Man; I, Robot; Surrogates; […]
Fact: over half the world’s population lives in cities. Fact: all developed cities like New York, Tokyo, Singapore and London, are in a race to become “wired”. Fact: the most […]
If you think that a thumbs up in ancient Rome meant that the beaten gladiator would live and that a thumbs down meant death, you can thank Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 […]
This crazy scheme would have restored the prehistoric land bridge between the UK and the Continent
A treasure map of the voyage to sobriety
5,000,000 Hits n Thirty hits – that’s how many this blog accumulated for the whole of September 2006, the first month of its existence. The numbers for October were a bit better – […]
The brother of a childhood friend inspired Michael Wigler’s research into the minds of those who are, “in wondrous ways, very different from us.”
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He is serving a life sentence in a Parisian prison and considered an icon of a bygone Cold War-era type of terrorism. So you wouldn’t expect to hear much from Ilich […]
Philosopher Paul Kurtz has been an influential mentor to me and he remains a major inspiration. Back in 1997, Kurtz hired me to work at the Center for Inquiry-Transnational as […]
George Packer’s review of Peter Beinart’s book, The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, is itself an elegant analysis of American history. Packer highlights some of choices our leaders […]
A team of the print world’s brightest innovators set out to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in just two days.
Leave it to a comic book icon to cause a flag-related stir as the 4th of July weekend approaches. Wonder Woman, everyone’s favorite 69-year-old Amazon, celebrated the 600th issue of […]
Inspiration isn’t a bolt of lightening—it comes out of your own sensibilities and understanding of the world.
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Whether out of financial prudence or budgetary necessity, the annual summer vacation has been a “staycation” for millions of families during this recession year. Local attractions have had to do, […]
Silence speaks volume. In the unmitigated disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico, two silent partners watch as BP endures a hurricane of criticism, Transocean and Haliburton, who it has […]
The US goes by the motto In God We Trust (but only since 1956, when it replaced the ‘unofficial’ motto, E pluribus unum). A motto (from the Italian word for […]
“Pure energy,” intoned Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock in the classic Star Trek episode “Errand of Mercy.” (In 1988, Information Society immortalized the phrase when they sampled it into their […]
Singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton is so famous that you might never have heard of him. That’s because he’s “internet famous” (i.e. he has a passionate fan base that he’s built up […]
As the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico enters its third month, a variety of efforts to stop the flow of oil have come and gone, all inspiring governments […]
Anne Lamott used to seek inspiration in “drugs, alcohol, and poetry.” But writing her novels has always been more like arduous manual labor than an ecstatic high.
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“The proper function of spies is to remind those who rely on spies that the kinds of thing found out by spies can’t be trusted,” notes Malcolm Gladwell.
When did Foucault and Derrida replace Trilling and Eliot? And why do literature students look to philosophers rather than literary critics in the first place?
The Impressionists now stand as the ultimate in artistic comfort food for the mainstream public. The billowy softness of their images graces office walls in framed reproductions and countless calendars. […]
In November 2009, nine researchers from MIT’s prestigious Media Lab were among the eleven authors of a paper* that espoused the value of programming as an essential skill for all. […]