Anyone who has watched a cable news channel for long enough recognizes the problem: after 20 or 30 minutes the news gets repetitive as stories are recycled for new viewers […]
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One supercontinent, ringing the equator
Now that the dust has settled after the immediate reaction to WikiLeak’s release of secret Afghan war logs, clearer lines can be drawn concerning the event’s significance. The most fundamental […]
Legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein says that he’s not as concerned about the state of investigative journalism as some of his contemporaries are—in fact, he thinks that newspapers like the […]
Most white women in America work their asses off. I live smack dab in the middle of stay at home mommy land, complete with the high priced tennis outfits and […]
Is the fading dominant male stereotype accurately captured by this summer’s films, which exhibit more dynamic gender roles? Are traditional men becoming less relevant to modern families?
“Beauty may only be skin deep, but that’s plenty deep enough to cost you a job, a promotion, or the training to get one.” Is discrimination based on looks the next civil rights battle?
“In other advanced economies, higher personal savings and greater reliance on export earnings created expectations of more rapid economic recovery,” Judge Richard Posner explains.
Patents are relatively weak incentives for innovation, especially when it comes to software and Internet startups, yet they may be usual in securing funding from venture capitalists.
“Psychologists have spent decades searching for personality traits that exist independently of circumstance, but what if personality can’t be separated from context?”
“The difference between major and indie labels now has less to do with aesthetics than with the way bands conceive of their careers.” Smaller labels can be just as profitable as big ones.
European scientists have unveiled Nao, a robot that is capable of mimicking human emotions and correctly identifying and responding to negative and positive emotions in other people.
“The govenrment needs to be exposed because it cannot be trusted to expose itself.” Even Fox News praises WikiLeak’s release of Afghan war logs as a necessary check against secrecy.
“By allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers.”
“Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory—inspired by pencil lead—that could make it all very simple.” The New Scientist reports.
In chemistry, a free radical is the name for an atom or group of atoms having at least one unpaired electron, thus making it unstable and highly reactive. From the […]
Design and innovation consultancy IDEO, credited with pioneering the concept of design thinking, has been at the forefront of pro-social design over the past decade. Now, they are entering the […]
Larry Wall, the father of Perl programming language, says that the language he created in 1987 is very “post-modern.” Like po-mo architecture, for instance, Perl “collects features from other languages, […]
Imagine heading out West with a pair of binoculars and unexpectedly coming across a pair of passenger pigeons, birds that have been extinct for decades? Or imagine driving into the […]
Two stories this week featured young black men and race. In one story, a young black man in his mid thirties who reported that he was often harassed at work […]
Granting same-sex couples access to marriage would be far better if that access came from elected institutions rather than from the courts, says Steve Chapman at The Chicago Tribune.
“Until we find the collective will, the drive for national economic security will continue to lead to collective insecurity.” A finance professor discusses the eventual downside of coveting resources.
“Once on the fringe, about 750,000 off the grid American households pioneer green living by tapping sustainable energy from the wind, sun, and earth.” The Christian Science Monitor reports.
“Mr. Greenspan is calling for the complete repeal of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, brushing aside Republicans and Democrats who say the economic recovery would be threatened.”
“Liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the ‘war on drugs’ there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight.”
Does the ability to exercise self-control determine your class? Research suggests that children with higher socioeconomic status demonstrate more self-control.
“Don’t covet your grief like a precious thing, something that justifies your every whim.” In the controversy over Cordoba House, The Economist sees a petulant America just trying to get its way.
Children’s author Roald Dahl was a socialite, fighter pilot, and spy for the British government after World War II. A new biography details the unassuming author’s foreign conquests.
A new meta-analysis shows a large majority of subjects for psychology experiments have been U.S. undergraduates, a population from which one should be wary of making generalized conclusions.
“Telekinesis. Harnessing the mind to control your surroundings. It is the stuff of fantasy. Now, that fantasy is crystallizing into reality.” The L.A. Times on consumer products that read your mind.