The kind of literary criticism that Lionel Trilling practiced, which assumed that national literatures reflected deep national values, is dead now.
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Snooki and crew are like the bearded ladies and the deformed of the Victorian era. The public has always been willing to pay a couple of cents to see something […]
Corporate America’s ability to create value the past few years has underwhelmed us. That, coupled with many other environmental effects, has led to many new players entering our consumer technology community. […]
NHK Japan and the National Film Board of Canada created this simulation of the effects of a massive asteroid collision with the earth. The effect is terrifying: energy released from […]
I’m as surprised as you are, but it is already Monday. Busy week for me – students getting ready to register for Fall Semester courses and a talk to give […]
Salih’s demise has long been self-evident. The Obama administration’s dithering has only put U.S. security interests more at risk.
Afghanistan’s annual bumper opium crop neither benefits the Taliban nor affects America as much as is believed. It is an Asia-centric trade that lines the pockets of corrupt government officials.
As new polymers keep radioactive water from the ocean, Japanese officials have warned that the nuclear crisis could drag on for months, the first time that they have offered a timescale.
If democracy is to take root in the Arab world, governments must make the youth unemployment crisis their highest priority, says Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Out of the United Nations comes a new idea for ending war. Peacebuilders: An intensive process that gives permission for foreign “interference” in aiding conflict resolution.
The United Nations has started to evacuate its staff from Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, ahead of a bloody final battle for the city that is expected to start today.
In a reversal of the long support Yemen’s president has received from the U.S., the Obama administration has quietly told allies it is time for regime change in the Gulf state.
One of the many advantages of You Tube and the social networking sites, is that it is possible to get a real measure of the de-regulated, ‘opinion led’ television the […]
One would expect the 150-year anniversary of the Italian state be something of a celebration. One would be wrong. The country is divided culturally, politically and economically.
Chinese authorities have detained Ai Weiwei, an outspoken critic of China’s government and one of its most famous contemporary artists—he is one among dozens recently held by the state.
“Disorientation is lost of the East,” novelist Salman Rushdie has written, reminding us of the original meaning of “Orient.” In The Orient Expressed: Japan’s Influence on Western Art, 1854-1918, which […]
John Jeremiah Sullivan has written a beautiful, beautiful piece about David Foster Wallace in GQ. It isn’t easy to write about Wallace; how Sullivan chooses to do it is illuminating. […]
The Madden video game series seeks to hone a message that is difficult for many young football players to accept: get a concussion, and you are off the field for the rest of the day.
Believing in a supernatural being who monitored and judged anyone at all times encouraged people to avoid acting on their immoral impulses, helping them survive, says author Jesse Bering.
We live in a society obsessed with performance. Think of exams like the S.A.T. and the G.R.E. Such high-stakes tests, however, are often spectacularly bad at predicting performance in the real world.
When faced with the thought of death, people are more likely to believe in intelligent design, the idea that life on Earth can be explained by an “intelligent being” guiding the process.
The brain is always anticipating what will come next—for example, what someone will say. This explains why jokes are funny: they add a twist to information our brain was anticipating.
While losing work is stressful, recent findings show wellbeing associated with disengagement at work may result in an equal if not greater drop in wellbeing than unemployment.
No government has yet taken the next step of reshaping its policies to promote happiness, but clear patterns reveal that low taxes, freedom of speech and equality are good for wellbeing.
Listening to your favorite melodies and harmonies can trigger the brain to release large amounts of dopamine, a chemical that sends “feel good” signals to the rest of the body.
Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton revolutionized the modern world through scientific advance; these very different men had one thing in common: an unshakable belief in God.
That chronic pain and depression are so often bound together suggests a complex relationship, and the brain’s shared circuitry for social and physical pain may lie at its heart.
In a front-page story at today’s Washington Post, David Brown spotlights research on the comparative risks of nuclear and coal power. As Brown reviews, nuclear power is far less of […]
Sexual harassment may have become so commonplace for women that they have built up resistance to harassing behavior they consider merely “bothersome,” suggests a new study.