I have a question for Punxsutawney Phil, and it’s not whether there will be six more weeks of winter. It’s whether we actually have a winter at all this year. Sadly, […]
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“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”Immigration is an integral part of the story Americans tell themselves about who they are. So why is it so difficult to immigrate here?
The ideal American store, Adam Gopnik once suggested, would have no employees. Consumers’ desires would be met flawlessly by unerring, tireless machines. On the other hand, the ideal French store […]
Canada’s system of community colleges is better preparing students to find jobs in careers that interest them. The schools are more nimble, responding to industry demand to train workers.
You’ve forgiven an affair. You’ve put up with violations of the marriage’s budget. You’ve been bored, irked, and ignored. But if he mentions picking up a goddamned wet towel off […]
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 . . .
BY AHMED EL-HADY Have you ever thought what is happening in our brains when we wander in the world around us? How do we perceive “reality”? How can we interact […]
The Internet company has announced a new policy to block tweets in countries where the content of the message violates local law. Twitter points out there is a fairly obvious workaround.
As underdeveloped economies grow, wages and respect are on the rise for Latin America’s working class population. The UN calls the region the world’s most unequal society.
Speaking of Deirdre McCloskey, Dalibor Rohac offers a nice overview of her recent work in a WSJ profile. Here’s the core argument of McCloskey’s most recent book, Bourgeois Dignity: Modern […]
Many people looking to bring new ideas to old age are still warm from the glow of LED and plasma displays at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show held in Las […]
This author explains convincingly that we haven’t been concerned enough with our children’s moral virtue—or acquiring the habits required to flourish as free and rational animals in a society such as ours. Aristotle, […]
Writing in the New York Times, Peter Singer and Agata Sagan ask “Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?” I dunno. Why? The infamous Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments showed […]
What if all the study habits you were taught in school are wrong? Psychologists now say not to take notes, to stop studying for extended periods and to study in many different places.
We’ve been discussing Islam a lot on this blog in the past few days, and much to my amusement, I’ve seen two different commenters promoting diametrically opposite distortions of my […]
No study has found any long-term benefit of attention-deficit medication on academic performance, peer relationships or behavior problems, the very things we would most want to improve.
Red Tails is without a doubt the most expensive ABC after school special ever made. I went home after seeing it and immediately downloaded A Soldier’s Story from Amazon to […]
The notion that we have a three-dimensional map inside our heads is an illusion, says a British neuroscientist. Instead, we locate our surroundings along horizontal and vertical planes.
Even people hailed as geniuses have plenty of mediocre and outright terrible ideas. What separates them from the rest is their ability to filter the good from the bad. How do they do it?
A simple and cheap device that stimulates the brain with a mild electric current appears to improve our capacity to learn skills like mathematics or a foreign language. Should we use it?
An excellent article by Bill Wasik in Wired UK discusses the role technology and connectivity play in the creation of unruly mobs (as opposed to the peaceful protests seen widely […]
‘Sex and the City’ star Cynthia Nixon recently said she chose to be gay, sparking a conversation over whether choosing to be gay entails the opposite ability: choosing not to be gay.
All I can say is thank you to the readers who suggested that I pick up 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I loved it. But it wasn’t because of the language, […]
The digital age is transforming medicine, making more data available to more people. The risk is that too much information can result in over-correcting health problems which don’t exist in the first place.
New research finds that government regulations that restrict the supply of abortions performed after 15 weeks gestation in the state of Texas increased the price of late abortions by 37% […]
For those who are interested, here’s my schedule for the next few months. I’ve got a few SSA speaking events, a conference or two, and one big announcement! • On […]
People with narcissistic personalities show greater levels of stress hormones in their bodies, according to new research. In the long run, that can mean higher rates of heart disease and hypertension.
After finding that the H5N1 bird flu virus can be willfully mutated and made communicable, a rare 60-day moratorium on research has been imposed. The study’s author argues testing must resume.
In a preliminary study, two patients have reported better vision after doctors injected stem cells into their eyes. The study is set to be expanded, using larger doses of stem cells.
I’ve had a busy last few months, and I confess I’ve fallen behind on my book reviews. (If you’re not familiar with these posts from the old site, I sometimes […]