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Without feeling like the victim of my own lust, I experienced freedom for the first time in my life. 

Last week, the blogosphere was in an uproar over a sermon given by a North Carolina pastor, Sean Harris, who seemingly advised parents to beat their children if they show […]

What separates the greatest achievers from the rest of us? 

The Boston Review is hosting a forum centered the claim of Michael Sandel,  a Harvard political theorist, that “markets crowd out morals.” Sandel’s essay is well worth reading. He clearly gives voice to […]

The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, characterized “cyber” as an “existential threat to the United States of America” in a recent issue of Fortune […]

Why is democracy so difficult? Could be because it demands that each of us accept, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz said to me way back when I wrote this, “that […]

Does knowing that sweets are dulces in Spanish help a child learn to resist a tasty treat? It may indeed, as people who learn two languages gain cognitive advantages that extend well beyond the ability to communicate with others.    

In 1962, the latest and greatest form of artificial illumination was invented; the light emitting diode (LED).  In recent years, they have reached a level of illumination suitable for most applications of indoor lighting.

What’s the Big Idea? There’s a revolution going on in neuroscience, says science writer Kayt Sukel, and it’s happening on two fronts. One way the science is changing: researchers are […]

What’s the Big Idea? The idea of “brain training” conjures up visions of children playing educational computer games and senior citizens solving Sudoku puzzles, but a great workout for the […]

The buzz surrounding physicist Stephen Hawking‘s newest experiments with communication technology has been a bit overexuberant, along the lines of “new technology could help Stephen Hawking communicate via brain waves!” […]

The troubling chronicle of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has me thinking about the trial of another dissident who faced a life-changing dilemma of his own 2411 years ago in […]

Displaying a surprising lack of self-awareness, Franzen represents his (and other book lovers’) aesthetic preference for the physical book as a universal point of morality . . .

Last week Rush Limbaugh said of Sandra Fluke, “If we are going to pay for your contraceptives, and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.” […]

Twin Brothers in Almost Lifelong Relationship Though I don’t read “Dear Prudence” letters, I was struck by a recent headline on Slate (which I do read). ‘Brotherly Love: My twin […]

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. 

Interview with Jason Silva by Frank Rose One afternoon recently I spent a couple of hours with Jason Silva, the longtime Current TV host who’s been making much-talked-about micro-videos about the […]

Ah retirement…you know the vision – vistas of long beaches, fairways, sunsets with umbrella drinks. Baloney. This imagery worked as an ideal for those who thought they might retire early […]

The latest climate change catastrophe scenario is now out: rising sea levels over the next century could flood 3.7 million people in over 500 U.S. cities, including New York, New Orleans and […]

Our competencies, unlike philosophy or theology or poetry, disconnect the method from the end, and that means they’re disconnected from liberal education.

William Shakespeare:  Playwright, language innovator, father of product placement

By Chris Rivard and Karl Rebay (Partners, Moss Adams)The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is two years old. Is it a success? A failure? Has health care been reformed? […]

When asked by CNN’s John King what he thinks about the Pentagon’s recent decision to allow female troops to serve nearer the front lines of battle, Rick Santorum replied that […]

The ability to sustain focus is one of the building blocks of organization. It is step two in our process to help you become more organized. The first step is to establish emotional control—to “tame the frenzy.” Now we are ready to take the next step—to sustain attention and to stay focused for greater lengths of time.    

Their paths were similar, but the outcomes were far from the same

For most of the world, music lessons are a luxury of the bourgeois class. Both musical instruments and music lessons are pricey. As the average American moves his home several […]

Pay attention, get focused, be vigilant, stay on task, keep your eye on the ball, listen up, get your head in the game: these are just a few of the […]

In the seething cesspool of Caravaggio’s Rome, violence was a form of advertisement; it let people know you were, so to speak, the wrong guy to f#@k with. Internationally renowned art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon revisits Caravaggio’s life as a kind of model for career success in tough times. 

This essay was previously published on AlterNet. In the summer of 2010, I saw him several times a week: a portly, dark-skinned gentleman, leaning against a pillar in Penn Station […]

I’d be remiss if I let 2011 slip by without a tribute to Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), who was born a century ago and who now looms larger over contemporary poetry […]