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We’ve covered variousdesignsolutions for the vision-impaired. But what about the hearing-impaired? While the sight is visual in nature and thus more organically linked to design, can the auditory sense be […]
Personalities are typically thought to be genetically determined; not so, says the New Scientist: “We may learn our personalities, and adjust them to situations we find ourselves in over time.”
Jagdish Bhagwati, professor of economics and law at Columbia, dispels five common myths about free trade such as, “Free trade may increase economic prosperity, but it is bad for the working class.”
Prior to the famous extinction of the dinosaurs, another mass extinction paved the way for their emergence, an emergence that happened much faster than previously thought, says The Economist.
In The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson referred to his fellow Americans as “citizens.”  But in an early draft of the document, it’s clear that he originally used some other […]
The vuvuzela is not a popular instrument outside of South Africa. World Cup players from other nations complain that it breaks their concentration, broadcasters have trouble making their commentaries heard […]
“It seems like we in the West have made a tradeoff between self-reliance and physical comforts and social well being. So, which is more important?” asks a Notre Dame psychology professor.
“Fiction has now become a museum-piece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers,” says the polemical Lee Siegel.
In just 3,000 years, an evolutionary microsecond, Tibetans have developed a unique version of a gene that helps them adapt to living at high altitudes. This according to a study published in Science.
“Just as healthy optimism can turn into irrational exuberance, a clear-eyed realism about the challenges facing the United States can gradually inflate a pessimism bubble,” says Ross Douthat today.
If Americans have an impending sense that our present moment represents a capitalized End of Something, let us take the moment to exhale and appreciate the tranquility of finality.
If not humans, is God to blame for recent natural disasters? What are the limits of divine and human agency? The New Yorker explains a philosophical twist whereby divinity is expressed through free will.
“With deception so significant a part of the natural world, it’s little wonder we resort to it almost reflexively. Indeed, who’s not to say that lying isn’t an in-built part of human nature?” asks the Independent.