The fusion of mind and machine—what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls the Singularity—depends on the faulty premise that our understanding of neurobiology increases exponentially.
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David Brooks has a very thoughtful column on the fact that a lot of soaring health care costs have to do using all means available to keep very sick people […]
Neuroscience and game theory may offer some insight into the current stalemate, suggesting that a sense of moral superiority could be disrupting a natural tendency to cooperate.
We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.
Riley Lark asks, ‘What’s at the heart of your classroom?‘ At the heart of mine are the concepts of student agency and continuous reflection, revision, and renewal. I teach graduate students: […]
Are alternative medical treatments like acupuncture and homeopathy scams or do they account for the mind’s influence in overall health in a way that traditional medicine does not?
The evidence is overwhelming that declining vaccination rates are contributing to outbreaks of disease. What should we do about people who decline vaccination for themselves or their children?
By building community groups and cooperating with other developing nations, China is tackling its AIDS epidemic. It has also created needle-exchanges and safer blood transfusions.
While the hormone-disrupting chemical BPA has been eliminated from baby bottles and other containers, current regulation makes it impossible to know which ones are chemical-free.
To fight child obesity, the federal government wants to limit the kinds of foods available to children. The food industry has already proposed its own set of weaker standards.
There are pluses and minuses to living with pets, not only with respect to your happiness and housekeeping, but also with respect to your physiological and psychological well-being.
Do you have the ethical obligation to inform a friend if their spouse is cheating? Is love even ethical at all? The Ethicist Randy Cohen weighs in.
From stock trading to lawmaking to data-driven school reform, we are becoming increasingly dependent on mathematical models to explain the slippery complexity of human nature.
What it means to go beyond seeing and to actually observe.
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The Dutch-born biologist Frans de Waal has chosen to study not what makes humankind vile and mean but rather what causes us to rise up in support of others, i.e. our moral potential.
Composer, singer, mother, AIDS activist; Alicia Keys wears many different hats, but they all seem to match her spirit of self-respect, humility, and desire to be a role model for her son.
The bulb wars burn brightly on. The members of the U.S. House who represent people for whom anti-government ideology burns more brightly than common sense have come back from […]
Now that the EMMY NOMINATIONS are out, I can give my awards for the best CONVERSATIONAL TV shows. My standard, of course, finds its peaks of excellence in conversational films […]
Passed over for the Secretary of State position, John Kerry has fashioned an active role for himself as a diplomat and foreign policy adviser to Obama. Will he get the job in 2012?
After Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel about the French Holocaust was rejected by some 20 publishers for its dark context, it was finally picked up and promptly sold 5 million copies.
Chairman of the media empire News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch insists his company has made only minor mistakes in the phone hacking scandal now being investigated by the F.B.I.
The release of the eighth film in a series of books and movies marks the end of the epic Harry Potter story. The series has received deserved accolades and is […]
Jim Zarroli and John Ydstie filed stories for NPR this week on the “new normal” for the American economy, with experts anticipating that 2% annual economic growth will be a […]
When you hear the name Samuel F. B. Morse you most likely think about Morse code or the telegraph. In reality, Morse only co-invented the code that bears his name […]
Through a literal deconstruction of the army uniforms of the veterans in the project, the “Combat Paper Project” hopes to provide cathartic healing and deconstruct the pain and trauma that their military service has left them with.
As print sales decline and new e-platforms pop up everywhere, the future of the book has become a source of widespread speculation. In my previous post I asked: what’s the […]
When Frank Bruni was hired as an op/ed columnist for the New York Times, I doubted that he was qualified. His latest column puts those doubts to rest. Bruni is […]
We often forget that standards of what is needed to provide education are very different on our planet. Whereas the developed countries are arguing about whether every child needs an […]