Was Shakespeare gay? Stephen Greenblatt says that Shakespeare inhabited a world in which “it is much more possible to express homosexual passion and enact that passion without triggering a social crisis.”
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There’s an indelible story in Jim Collins’ Good to Great about Admiral Jim Stockdale, a war hero who survived torture as a POW in Vietnam. From Collins’ book: “I never […]
In Part I, I introduced the idea that we should employ the principle of charity when engaging with ideas (particularly online) – especially from new and unknown interlocutors. Many problems […]
What’s the Big Idea? As the K-12 school year starts up again in full force, it’s worth asking: are American public schools really failing? According to the measure set by […]
The Democrats have a lot to cheer about after a terrific convention in Charlotte. God, however, is shaking her head. On Wednesday, Mitt Romney lambasted the Democrats for removing a […]
Thanks to a huge Kickstarter response, the Oculus Rift is ready to bring virtual reality technology back into gaming, motion sickness and all.
A recently-released line of state-of-the-art mainframes proves that, all these years later, IBM is still going strong in the Internet age.
Okay, not quite, but close: A new smart fabric, developed in Germany, can trigger an alarm when penetrated, and is flexible enough to be incorporated into building walls and floor coverings, among other materials.
I’ve written in the past about the Secret, more properly called the Law of Attraction, the perenially popular New Age idea which says that merely thinking about something draws it […]
What if you could bottle President Obama’s famous cool, Lady Gaga’s style and Michael Phelps’s athleticism? An experimental philosopher is attempting to do just that. Sort of.
Numbers really are sexy. They are what will power our world for the foreseeable future. They are available like never before, and we know now how to use them wisely.
The line between man and machine is blurring to the extent that what previously seemed in the realm of science fiction is now science fact: humans with “super-abilities” who run faster, throw further, and hit harder than anyone else in the world.
“It’s the economy, stupid!” James Carville crowed throughout the 1992 presidential election, and has pretty much continued crowing since. What do you do when you know it’s the economy that […]
Several new apps represent the modern version of two cans connected by a tight string: Two (or more) smartphones, connected by the Internet.
A World War II veteran has created a wind turbine that hides its blades inside a drum-like structure so that birds and bats won’t fly into them accidentally.
Here’s my personal list of things that are over-rated. And, of under-rated things that aren’t supposed to make me happy, but do. What’s on your list? SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTIES. I […]
When I struggle to wrap my head around a problem, I often turn to art to help me literally picture the big issue and, I hope, guide me to an […]
Thirty-five years after their launch, the two Voyager deep space probes are about to enter interstellar space, while still transmitting data back to Earth.
Several geoengineering schemes for solving global warming, ranging in cost and technical achievability, are evaluated in a new study.
Last week, the last vestiges of the pop-science writer Jonah Lehrer’s journalistic respectability evaporated. Wired, which had stuck with him through a summer of revelations about his self-borrowing, plagiarism and […]
A combined US/UK study claims that LED bulbs have a slight environmental edge over compact fluorescents, and with continued improvements that advantage is expected to grow significantly fairly soon.
Today’s rising generation, or Internet Pioneers, are a complex bunch. They are “impatient, empowered, multi-tasking, curious, confident, confused, sexually liberated, sometimes binge-drinking, and often fragile kids.”
In ‘On Liberty’, one of John Stuart Mill’s concerns was the best way to conduct ourselves, since conduct in expression was central to his moral claims about individual liberty. Mill […]
The classic Horatio Alger myth — the rags-to-riches tale of someone from a humble, working-class background who attains a modicum of wealth and stability in American society — is virtually an evergreen […]
A new report out by Oxfam says that the effects of climate change on the world’s food supply and food prices are greatly underestimated and must be taken more seriously.
Bowing to public pressure, Guangzhou and other Chinese metropolises are taking steps to improve the environmental quality of life for their citizens, signaling a recognition that growth for growth’s sake is bad policy.
As I begin to come back to earth after Michelle Obama’s spectacular speech at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, what strikes me most about Day One in Charlotte […]
Compelled by a programmer shortage, Estonia is implementing a computer programming curriculum that teaches children as young as 6 to code. It joins a growing movement that’s designed to make everyone “code-literate.”
A new site offers users the ability to create online flyers that they can post on their social networks, presumably saving paper, tacks, tape, and time.
New scientific evidence confirms that the mere presence of a cell phone can affect how you communicate with someone face-to-face.