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As genetic research advances, the risk of attributing too many qualities, such as genius, to our genes dangerously downplays individual potential for achievement.
Richard Dawkins lets go some invective against Pope Benedict XVI when asked by the Washington Post if the pontiff should be held responsible for the Church’s sex abuse scandals.
Gary Becker and Richard Posner of the University of Chicago discuss the merits of a Value Added Tax as a replacement for income tax and a solution to American budget deficits.
The eternal quest for self knowledge has entered the realm of cold data collection: statistics to make our personal lives more calculable and efficient.
Of all old media platforms, TV has been the best at adapting to the Internet and still enjoys popularity while the CD, the newspaper, and possibly the book, are in decline.
Athletics isn’t all brawn: the professional athlete’s brain has been trained to be more efficient enabling them to make quick decisions in a rapidly changing environment.
“To achieve deep focus nowadays is also to have struck a blow against the dissipation of self; it is to have strengthened one’s essential position,” writes Sven Birkerts.
Plenty of people on Wall Street knew that a crash was coming—and that they responded by grabbing all the profit they could, writes Christopher Hayes. He thinks they should face criminal sanctions.
“Arctic amplification” refers to the fact that the region is warming twice as quickly as the rest of the planet—and as ice warms, exposing more ocean water, the process naturally speeds up.
There is no single part of the human brain that gives it advanced language capabilities. Rather, humans rely on multiple parts of the brain to extract meaning from sentences.
Some believe we should move a system where health insurers pay a fixed, up-front cost for each particular health problem—and let the hospital and caregivers use the money as they see fit.