As I explained a couple of years ago, I lost interest in talking up Constitution Day when the government said we at colleges that get federal money are required to […]
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People often conflate the conditions of happiness with material wellbeing. There’s lots of evidence that there’s no connection at all.
Review of Leta Hong Fincher’s Leftover Women – The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Zed Books, April 10, 2014 – 5/5 stars BEIJING – I remember I read a The […]
As the population of cities continues to grow, real estate runs out fast. But one innovative solution may be the wave of the future: building down! “It is not the beauty […]
Over its history the Earth has seen an incredible diversity of life – maybe as many as fifty million species.
A Big Idea Prize has been announced that will award a full-ride scholarship to a Presidio degree program for the best “Big Idea” to move the needle in sustainability.
Robert Thurman: Everybody has a Buddha in there and Buddhas have more fun.
BEIJING – James Palmer, a journalist from Beijing, reports about the ongoing plight of the disabled in China. His article deserves attention: Practical and communist “95% of orphans in China […]
Every two years the American contemporary art world converges on The Whitney Museum in New York City. And biennially the Whitney Biennial inspires the whole gamut of critical reactions from […]
Ultimately, your lifetime is a sum of actions, experiences and how you spent your time. How would you wish to be remembered?
Am I the only one fascinated by the issue of currency conversion in literature? When a posh fictional nobleman is rumored to have an income of such-and-such, or when a […]
Jesus and Buddha both embraced the philosophy of love your enemy. Columbia University professor Robert Thurman takes us through the history of vengeance and explains how to minimize contention between you and your enemies.
Over the past few years, government has discovered that it can accomplish a lot when it sets aside the notion that human beings are rational. Rather than giving people good […]
Using less math and more logic, we can model the muddling masses. Reality’s richer patterns require better metaphors and methods.
“Love, Actually” exemplifies a remarkable transformation from a society that understood female empowerment as a systemic concern to one that interprets all feminist concerns about empowerment through the ideological lens of market-based morality.
California’s program is still young and isn’t the world’s first emission trading program, but here are the top four reasons we’re celebrating – and why the global community should, too.
Pew released an interesting survey today on millennial women’s and men’s perceptions of the workplace. It makes me wonder about the role of surveys in shaping (rather than simply recording) […]
Inspirational leaders understand and can scale the distinction between doing something and, as capitalists, making money versus doing something in order to make money.
From Aeroflot to McDonald’s and many other businesses in between, a new wave of service training aims to change the country’s famously infamous treatment of customers.
Mood has long been known to affect health, with those living in consistently happier states enjoying a lower risk of disease.
Brigham Young researchers discovered that the type and frequency of texts sent between people in committed relationships reflected the quality of that relationship.
So I differ from many other non-libertarian conservatives by appreciating many of America’s huge national and multinational chain institutions, such as Walmart and Waffle House. I was glad to discover […]
An extraordinarily simple explanation of the most mind-boggling concept of modern science. “In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.” -Walt […]
The screenwriter Danny Strong explains how listening to critical feedback is essential to the creative process.
We should just be eating real food. If it’s raw or cooked, I’m happy if people just eat real food.
Oklahoma City, the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” may soon have a monument to Satan on its statehouse steps.
The most important part of life is work, it’s the flow, it’s getting stuff done, feeling like you’re doing something. We have that in spades. We’re really, really happy.
Don’t worry. Be happy. Live in the present. The philosopher Rousseau said that was the natural condition of man, before he was screwed up by self-consciousness, time, awareness of death, […]
Extrinsic motivators like status and money tend to be back-end loaded, they tend to be delayed. And so, as Robert Kaplan points out, we need short-term rewards.
One of my favorite BIG THINKERS, Dave Berreby, criticizes our Declaration of Independence. Here’s the Declaration’s theory: We have the right to life, and we have the right to the […]