Search Results

The great benefit of education, “the key to increasingly upward mobility,” is expanding the vocabulary of students.

The 21st century requires a new kind of learner—not someone who can simply churn out answers by rote, but a student who can think expansively and solve problems resourcefully.

A professor specialising in spatial analysis at London’s UCL has produced a wonderful interactive map of London produced purely with a peppering of dots marking the locations individuals tweeted from […]

Nothing hurts like a blown call. Baseball’s bittersweet beauty owes much to moments such as Umpire Jim Joyce’s missing a call to rob Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga of a […]

I just got back from leading a 9-day meditation retreat in the wild and cactus-filled desert of Arizona. And I feel exuberant, inspired, and powerfully awake to the presence of […]

I wanted my audience to identify with Shylock in a deeply personal way, so much so that they would involuntarily nod and think, “Yes, I understand, I have been there.”

Ever feel sorry for a sidewalk sparrow with a cigarette butt in its beak? Did you sigh in wistful sadness at seeing nature’s beauty polluted by human industry, which turns […]

There is no way to understand tragedies like these in an ontological framework of the cosmos. 

“I’m a storyteller at heart,” Star Wars mastermind George Lucas says at the beginning of his proposal for a new museum to be built on the grounds of San Francisco’s […]

The brilliant Albert Einstein didn’t believe in this realm, and yet he won a Nobel Prize for playing in it.

“A poem should not mean/ but be,” Archibald MacLeish declared in his poem “Ars Poetica.” We too-often look to the arts to explain life itself as if they function as […]

In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to share an article written by my former colleague Ross Robertson for EnlightenNext magazine called “A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21stCentury.” […]

A decade ago, Chris Hedges titled his analysis of the addictive power of war War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. If war truly is a force that gives […]

We’re told to have a positive attitude; that love conquers all; that anger is unhelpful and hate unneeded. Evangelists of optimism would drown us in their toothy smiles and keep […]

Once reserved for the super-rich, island real estate is becoming more affordable, with some selling for as little as the price of an average used car.

This holiday season, perhaps more than any other recent holiday season, the greatest gift we can ask for is peace. Thanks to Yoko Ono’s IMAGINE PEACE (photo above), a synchronized […]

“Hello China!…… there are just so many of you.” Stefani Germanotta, better known by her Queen-inspired moniker, Lady Gaga, made that appeal to 15,000 screaming teenage Chinese girls in a […]

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell….what I’ve come to learn is […]

In 1975, rock legend Lou Reed released an album entitled Metal Machine Music. The album consists of no songs, no lyrics and is entirely devoid of melody and rhythm. Instead, […]

Have you ever sliced up a human brain? I’ll be honest:  I’ve only done it once.  I don’t remember much about it–it was a long time ago.  But I recall […]

Facial symmetry, long known to help form our concept of beauty, is also a good indicator of general health, say American and Scottish scientists who have completed a study on macaques.

I’m convinced that human beings are far less rational, coherent, consistent and aware in their daily decisions than they are supposed to be. This means we’re out of synch with […]

In 1951, musical composer and overall art theorist John Cage (shown above) stepped into an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Touted as the quietest place on Earth, the anechoic chamber […]

A company now offers visualizations of audio waveforms as prints suitable for framing. Included in the collection are speeches from Kennedy, King, Reagan, Obama, and others.

Over the last half-century we’ve emphasized physicality over philosophy. Yet a growing contingent of yogis has been asking questions such as: How can we take these ethical, philosophical and moral codes and apply them to our times? 

The art equivalent of the old “if a tree falls in the forest…” question is, if nobody (or nearly nobody) can see a masterpiece, is it still a masterpiece? How […]

Some research proposes that sorrow in fiction might be a form of psychological relief. A more fruitful explanation is that important virtues, values and morals that elicit uplifting emotions accompany sad moments in fiction. 

In her new romantic comedy, 2 Days in New York, musician, actress, and screenwriter Julie Delpy proclaims, “You know why I don’t believe in the soul? Because the soul would […]

The first time I listened to Pinkerton, Weezer’s second studio album, I hated it. And so did almost everyone else. Rolling Stone readers ranked it as the third worst album […]

Forget the “pivot” or the “reboot” or the once ubiquitous “2.0” – the hot new technology buzzword this holiday season is the “mobile facelift.” From Silicon Valley to New York […]