“Fiction has helped humanity survive. Even though science can explain the need of fiction, it cannot replace it.”
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“Don’t trade your passion, originality, and curiosity for some second-hand notion of success.” William Deresiewicz urges freshmen not to play it safe.rn
“Through science and technology, we are getting better at bringing cosmic quantities to the human scale.” “The everyday is slowly but surely inching towards the cosmic.”
It’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem. It’s also a surprisingly costly one. Some of us lose money and risk blindness because of it.rn
The real cost of cheap pineapples in the UK is carried by Costa Rica, where sprays and pesticides eliminates biodiversity and endanger public health.
Nate Anderson looks at the “legal blackmail” business, a pornographer who decided to take revenge on pirates and the backlash and legal changes it provoked.
“If Obama wants to save his presidency, he may have to do it the old-fashioned way: not by transcending his party’s divisions, but uniting his supporters around their common fears.” rn
“As morality merges with management, a servile readiness to fit thought and conduct to what is politically correct becomes the passport for continuing dependence on…an intrusive state.”
Angry Birds is a chuckle-inspiring game about wingless birds who have been wronged by a gang of pigs. Virginia Heffernan explains how she loves it but also now hates everything.
Can teachers do much to remedy poor academic performance that is due to low IQ, poor health, peer-group pressures, a bad family environment, or the effects of popular culture?
Last month, design and innovation firm fuseproject introduced WattStation — a revolutionary electric vehicle charging station for public spaces, developed in partnership with GE. Leveraging the technology and its critical […]
An companion piece to Indian novelist Pankaj Mishra’s elegant Times Op-Ed on India is Isaac Chotiner’s essay in the Times Book Review on (literary magazine)Granta’s Pakistan Issue. Chotiner references Pakistani […]
Does the current drinking age (21) contribute to dangerous outcomes related to both binge drinking and unplanned, unsafe sex?
“The strained economy shouldn’t keep the nation from crafting school improvements, but Obama’s pitch for longer school years is unhelpful right now.”
“As the top tax rate rises and falls, so do tax avoidance techniques—both legal and illegal. Changes in reported income, therefore, might not reflect changes in actual income.”
“How do drones change the nations that use them?” Does America need to consider the morality of increasing use of unmanned drone attacks into Pakistan?
“When Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun in 1958, the famously wild and inventive author wrote a cover letter that broke all the rules.”
“If there’s one epithet the right never tires of, it’s ‘elitism.’ So what do Republicans mean by this French word?” Slate reviews the history of a modern political scare word.
The New Republic explains why Palestine is unlikely to renounce violence as a political tool, give up on current negotiations or demand the right to vote in Israel.
“Malcolm Gladwell is wrong about the poor revolutionary power of social networking, as the tweeters in Kashmir show.” The Guardian responds to The New Yorker’s critique of Twitter.
“It turns out that the enemies of free expression are adept at the Internet, too.” The Wall Street Journal reports on totalitarian regimes that restrict cyber-freedom.
“For decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America.” Duff Wilson on the shadowy underworld of big pharma.
“The chief executive of Microsoft is going to the U.K. to explain the multi-billion dollar bet that the world’s biggest software company and a poster boy for corporate America is making.”
It’s sad to watch someone drift over to the dark side. I’m not talking about Anakin Skywalker. I’m talking about renowned Guardian art blogger extraordinaire Jonathan Jones. I don’t know […]
When I first launched my blog in March, you may remember me writing about a blog post entitled “IMAX Hubble 3D & The James Webb Space Telescope.” The new telescope […]
I got an email yesterday from Pubit!, a new service that will allow writers to publish their own ebooks and offer them for sale on Barnes & Noble’s website, announcing […]
Ed Balls may not have been elected Labour leader, but over the past few months he has certainly emerged from under Gordon Brown’s wing. Tribalistic, pugilistic, Balls is something the […]
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired after letting loose an anti-semitic tirade against Jews in the media in general, and Daily Show host Jon Stewart in particular. Here’s a transcript […]
At The Guardian site, Martin Robbins has nailed everything that’s wrong with science news on “general interest” websites in this pitch-perfect parody. It gets at the heart of the uneasy […]
“Now that gold has crossed the magic $1,000 barrier, why can’t it increase ten-fold?” Harvard Economics professor Kenneth Rogoff on the world’s most unpredictable precious metal.