What is the Big Idea? Step into a classroom in North Korea and you will find very little that differs from a classroom in New York City – chalkboard, rows […]
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Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan unravels the reasons why death is considered bad for someone and finds them wanting. To be sure, he feels that death is bad for those who pass on.
The dating site for married people, Ashley Madison, has now been around for over a decade. What can we now learn about marriage and monogamy from this “sociological experiment on steroids”?
A friend recently asked me: why has public opinion on same-sex marriage “evolved,” in Obama’s coinage, while public opinion on abortion grinds itself deeper into a rut? It’s an interesting […]
One consistent theme I’ve found of investigating outrage is how often those who are outraged demand that legality align itself to their morality. Consider for example New York State’s non-criminal […]
New technology platforms and lingering job shortages mean volunteering will be increasingly motivated by self-interest. So is it still volunteering? Or should we not worry about defining it?
Compromise may be important to stable relationships but it can make the bedroom a very boring place. Sex psychologist David Schnarch suggests alternating between preferences.
As fathers play larger roles in their children’s lives, families are reevaluating old gender roles. But when two working adults are also committed parents, what energy is left for marriage?
The latest incarnation of the CEO as a unique corporate asset is the saga unfolding at JP Morgan Chase, where Jamie Dimon is supposedly under the gun for being at […]
Conor Friedersdorf doesn’t understand why Andrew Sullivan gushes so much about President Obama given the heavy importance Sullivan seems to place on a number of issues on which Obama has […]
In 1923, during an exhibition of his art collection that would become the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, two years later, Dr. Albert C. Barnes told an interviewer, “I am […]
Earlier this week I caught a post on Lindsay Beyerstein’s blog Duly Noted, highlighting a horrifying NYT story wrestling with the question of whether children can be psychopaths, and if […]
Sex. What a compelling topic! As a spiritual teacher, whether I’m giving a lecture or leading a retreat, whenever the subject comes up, a very particular form of focused attention […]
MSNBC’s Morning Joe is one of the few places on cable news where you can find genuine ideological cross-talk. It’s not surprising then that the program hosted this week University […]
Internet pioneer Jaron Lanier argues that free technologies like Facebook come with a hidden and heavy cost – the livelihoods of their consumers.
If current research proves fruitful, the homes and cities of the future may be powered by viruses. Berkeley Lab scientists have genetically engineered the M13 virus to output more power.
As more American cities warm to the idea of bicycle sharing programs, the bike may evolve into the ideal platform for gathering urban data on everything from traffic levels to heartbeat rates.
Class of 2012, you’ve heard it before: you will graduate into a world transformed by the global financial crisis. Unemployment among young people is at its highest rate since WWII, […]
Access to mobile computing, to allow employees to check email outside of working hours, increases productivity up to a point. After that it just burns people out and makes them unhappy.
Just around the corner from my desk something strange is happening. Miles and miles of hair is being teased into place, bucket loads of make-up are being applied and delicate […]
As his ear continues to be bent by assorted British Government officials, spooks and former Ministers determined that he introduce further restrictions over disclosure of information in ‘sensitive’ court cases […]
The presiding philosophy of the Laboratory for Perception is ultimately more informed by the possibilities of the future than by the past. Eagleman is fascinated by the idea that we could import the technology into human biology to enhance our sensory perception of the world, broadening and deepening our reality.
Take some standard tools for graphing data. Add the power of three-dimensional printing. Result: Data rendered not as a graph or chart, but as an object. A new frontier in […]
The United States of America murdered an innocent man. But this is not the main reason we should be against capital punishment. Carlos DeLuna was put to death in 1989 […]
“Too much experience…may restrict creativity because you know so well how things should be done that you are unable to escape to come up with new ideas.”
A new robotic sailboat aims to set navigation records while collecting data on marine life. In the future, such boats could be used for search and rescue operations and tsunami detection.
Are human beings’ needs and desires evolving faster than start-up companies can respond to them?
Believe it or not, this post continues with my theme of Cartesian America. As I explained, the Cartesian/Lockean American understands science basically to be technology. Its point is to make […]
Anxiety Creates Extra Tasks – And Problems Have you ever had one of those ‘super-productive’ days where you burn through all of your tasks and then feel… strangely hollow? This […]