Last night Frontline aired the film al-Qaeda in Yemen, which was reported by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad who writes for the Guardian and who, along with Declan Walsh when he was at […]
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Last week I posted on the CIA’s request to carry out “signature strikes” in Yemen. I made quite clear my opposition to the policy, not because I’m opposed to drones […]
Jonathan Gottschall says stories are good for us. I’ll soon apply myself full-time to story-writing, so you might suppose I’d find this an encouraging thought, but I don’t. It’s an annoying thought. […]
Back in 2004, Jon Stewart famously hijacked CNN’s hyper-partisan “Crossfire” show, calling on the hosts to “stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America.” Rather than fostering real debate on the issues […]
The way we diagnose depression is changing, in the laboratory and the clinic. New blood tests measure depression’s biomarkers while new diagnostic guidelines say grief is the same as depression.
As I mentioned in my last link roundup, I wanted to discuss in more detail the Pope’s latest Easter homily, in which he directly addresses the “disobedience” of priests who […]
So, I guess Facebook is here to stay. In honor of its over-subscribed IPO, I’m brainstorming about how social media might be existentially changing our romantic lives and intimacy. Here’s […]
As any parent of a distractible seven-year-old knows, the neural circuits involved in self-control are some of the latest-developing parts of the brain. This important set of abilities is worth the wait, though—as well as some parental effort. Parents can accelerate the development of self-control by encouraging their children to pursue goals that are challenging but not impossible, a moving target that depends on the child’s age and individual abilities.
Three things stood out to me yesterday amid all the Trayvon Martin related hoopla surrounding the arrest of George Zimmerman on a charge of murder in the second degree. I […]
Fact-checkers were quick to observe how thoroughly Rick Santorum misread John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion and politics when the Republican contender declared his nauseaover JFK’s message on the Sunday […]
Is there any reason to avoid death? We all die eventually, but is it a destiny sealed in for a predetermined time, or do we actually have some control over how long we are on this Earth?
We all know the standard script surrounding divorce. A young person learns his/her parents are divorcing and their fantasy of a happy family is shattered. Falling into despair they under-perform […]
Several years ago, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister conducted a study that measured the productivity of computer programmers. Their data set included more than 600 programmers from 92 companies. According […]
If there’s a villain in Rosalind E. Krauss’ newest book, Under Blue Cup, it’s Marcel Duchamp. Art fell in the toilet with the dawn of Duchamp’s Fountain.
Today, the question of how people make decisions is an animated and essential one, capturing the attention of everyone from neuroscientists to lawyers to artists. In 1956, there was one person in all of New York known for his work on the brain: Harry Grundfest. An aspiring psychiatrist, Eric Kandel chose to take an elective in brain science and found himself studying alongside Grudfest at Columbia University.
People tend to see their ideological affiliation as constitutive of their identity in a way their opinion about, say, the ontology of mental illness isn’t.
Does Facebook kindle romantic jealousy? Can your choice of “relationship status” in a profile affect your relationship? Three recent articles from the journal Cyberpsychology & Behaviortackle these questions of love […]
The trouble, says Nobel Laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman, is that we’re often confident in our intuitive judgments even when we have no idea what we’re doing.
Thanks to everyone who read, commented on, and shared my first column, “The Beautiful Optimism of Libertarianism,” last week. The responses were thoughtful and varied significantly; I hope to address […]
In my essay “Into the Clear Air“, I wrote about how people leaving religion often go through a stage of profound darkness. In the end stages of deconversion, there’s acceptance […]
Twentieth-century liberalism lives on in forms of the social contract that are outmoded for the twenty-first century’s globalized, technological world. Liberalism today is entirely reactive, fending off attempts by conservatism […]
These days, one of the blogs where I spend the most time commenting is Leah Libresco’s Unequally Yoked on Patheos. This isn’t just because its author has a unique and […]
You might think the debate over the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act is a classic confrontation between state power and individual liberty, big government liberalism versus minimal state […]
The line of battle for the future of public education is clear. The first side has money, powerful political connections, and an infrastructure of nonprofit organizations with paid staff. The other side has this: the ability to become a true grassroots movement.
You should treat your life as if it were a start-up business.
More and more research suggests there is more than a fleeting boost to be gained from placebos. A change in mind-set about your health can create powerful physical changes.
These days it’s hard enough to get any job at all. If it is part of a good life to have a job that you love then the current situation […]
It appears that Santorum’s time as a serious contender for the Republican nomination is about to come to a close. It’s true that the experts (including me) have wrongly counted […]
The Daily Mail published an article this week by Samantha Brick, called, “There are Downsides to Looking This Pretty: Why Women Hate Me for Being Beautiful.” Problem is, according to […]
If you’re a parent and you want to introduce your child to art, it’s sometimes hard to find that perfect combination of optimism and imagination in a single artist. Too […]