Researchers are using social networking sites to map the spread of flu symptoms between friends, a technique which may one day aid greatly in stemming a public epidemic.
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The divide in American ideology between rugged individualism and collective responsibility can be bridged by devolving powers to local communities, says Matthew Dowd for The CSM.
“Reminiscence—not forgetting—faces extinction in a digital age that prioritizes the present over even the recent past,” writes Evgeny Morozov for the Boston Review.
From Paper Monument, British culture is observed by an American writer as a reflection of his own; in both cases he sees a cultural facade papering over Empires fallen and falling.
Clarence Page sees a “radical individualism” that binds the TEA Party and the cultural revolution of the ’60s, but finds practical solutions more lacking in the former.
It’s amazing to think that the work of a groundbreaking photographer such as Henri Cartier-Bresson could once be found on the coffee tables of middle class homes accross America, and […]
Given the exploding coal mines in West Virginia, apocalyptic oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, and the volcanic ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajökull glacier that stranded millions of people […]
When I was a child and decided to become a physicist, I never dreamed that I would be traveling all over the world with a TV film crew, or lecturing […]
There is a palpable sense of relief amongst many in the Labour Party that Gordon Brown finally acknowledged the inevitable and stood down, after it became apparent that there could […]
What does the Tea Party Movement in the U.S. have in common with the right-wing backlash against immigrants in Europe? Bard College professor Ian Buruma says they are both part […]
When Mario Lavandeira, a.k.a. Perez Hilton, started his blog PageSixSixSix.com in 2004, he says he imagined that maybe a few of his friends would read his musings on tabloid gossip […]
Chess makes for strange bed fellows. Last night at a party at the Trump SoHo hotel in downtown Manhattan, two former world chess champions, Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov, put […]
I’m no TV critic. My best TV watching days were over twenty years ago. But a slot on my blog here might as well be reserved for my weekly thoughts […]
Peter Beinart writes that “particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal.”
Adam Thirwell writes that despite all the geographical accidents to have befallen Central Europe, a cogent literature can still be defined and it turns out to be of very high quality.
An L.A. Times editorial argues that Major League Baseball should move its All Star game out of Phoenix in protest against Arizona’s new immigration law.
Gary Becker and Richard Posner look at what created the housing market bubble of the previous decade and why financial institutions couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it.
Dozens of new species including the Pinocchio Frog, Gargoyle-Faced Gecko and Strange Pigeon have been discovered in Indonesia’s remote Foja Mountains on the island of New Guinea.
According to Einstein, the universe should be equal parts matter and anti-matter; in other words, we shouldn’t exist, so why do we? Some physicists in Chicago may have the answer.
Frank Kermode tries to suss out what Eliot meant by having “a shudder” while reading, a standard by which Eliot defined good poetry and prose, such as in Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
The Boston Globe finds a dangerous irony in Israel’s decision to keep Noam Chomsky from speaking at a Palestinian University in the West Bank.
“What we’re bequeathing our children is a childhood designed by lawyers,” says Lenore Skenazy who thinks pedantic caution is replacing common sense.
Charles Krauthammer congratulates himself for independently reaching the same conclusion as the Attorney General on loosening Miranda rights when public safety is at risk.
Nestle has been forced to change its environmentally-destructive business practices after a social media coup; what can netroots activists learn from the victory? After it was revealed that the Swiss […]
Today, we’re doing something a bit different. Instead of focusing on a specific design-for-good product or idea, let’s focus on why it’s important to talk about these products and ideas […]
The New York Times has introduced a new blog, on philosophy. It’s called Stone. The first piece/post is written by the very elegant and, philosophically, compelling Simon Critchley, and addresses […]
Ross Douthat writes, “from Washington to Athens, the economic crisis is producing consolidation rather than revolution, the entrenchment of authority rather than its diffusion.”
The L.A. Times reports that “for most of the 1920s, a patient could get a prescription for one pint every 10 days about as easily as California patients can now get ‘recommendations’ for medical marijuana.”