Studies show that happiness is directly linked to conversations that are substantial, not superficial. Yet our communications are dominated by quick electronic exchanges.
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Video and photo editing, smartphone apps, email and other digital tools are gaining popularity as parents try to persuade their 21st-century kids that there is a Santa Claus.
Who did we under-appreciate in 2010? In the endless whirr of 24/7 corporate news, the people who actually make a difference are often trampled in the stampede.
Happy holidays! Every year as I range across the web in search of news and ideas I come across a few articles that stand out as exceptionally worth reading. Today […]
Over half the world’s population lives in cities, with millions more pouring in every year. Countries like China, India and South Korea are investing heavily in new so-called “smart cities” […]
Butler “challenged the status quo, looking at what could be achieved in later life, not at what might be lost,” writes Richard Hodes, Director of the National Institute on Aging.
Ryan Chin, of MIT’s Smart Cities group writes that while Mitchell was perhaps the world’s leading urban theorist, he was also a great mentor and advocate for students.
The father of fractal geometry “was one of the most visionary mathematicians from the latter part of the twentieth century,” writes Boston University professor Robert Devaney.
The key to understanding the enduring relevance of the speech is to focus on what Ike actually said and to understand what motivated the general for much of his adult lifetime.
A fake pill can make patients feel better, even when they know it’s nothing but inert ingredients, according to a new study where patients knew they were receiving a sugar pill.
By intensely focusing the sun’s rays on a rare earth oxide, researchers have discovered a reactor that could produce fuel from water in an easily stored form.
The British universities, Oxford and Cambridge included, are under siege from a system of state control that is undermining the caliber of their scholarship, says Simon Head.
It’s been a better year for God. After withering literary assaults on the Almighty from the academic Richard Dawkins and the essayist Christopher Hitchens, believers have hit back.
If you want to know what industry will power the next U.S. economy, follow the money. Where are investors really looking? And where is research and experimentation really happening?
The Mexican government has been using the army to fight the nation’s drug cartels for about four years. It isn’t working. Some critics say the army is part of the problem.
One is a gadget-maker, the other a search engine—but now Apple and Google are at odds. Robert Lane Greene reports on how each company requires a different leap of faith.
The best way to face the future and tackle diet-related problems is to arm people with knowledge and skills. The Economist compiles the year’s best dietary advice.
Christmas is one night that is allowed to rip itself from the continuum and to exist all on its own, a mystery and damnation to all the clocks ticking away below.
We can all simplify our traditions and distill our expectations to their essence: a time of joy and peace. Adele Stan says she found the true meaning of Christmas by not celebrating it.
Last week I vowed to pay more attention to replication in psychology experiments. Repeated experiments are an important test of whether a finding is “really out there” or an accident, […]
Last month, we looked at Meltware – an ingenious line of DIY tableware made out of palm tree wax. Now, a similar and even more playful project is applying the same […]
Like Satan, he is known by many names—Sinterklaas, Père Noël, Tomte—but we Americans call him Santa Claus. The long white beard, red outfit, reindeer, etc., all seem like givens to […]
Homelessness is perhaps the most disconcerting reminder of the staggering gap between the rich and the poor in some of the world’s wealthiest nations. In Detroit alone, more than 18,000 […]
Recently I have found myself in trouble twice for my choice of words. The first time was for calling sex workers “prostitutes,” and the second time was for calling prostitutes […]
2010 was the year good old-fashioned, blame-it-on-the-breeding-masses overpopulation theory re-entered the mainstream. There’s just too many Malthusians, says Tim Black.
Behind our destructive system of unbridled capitalism is a shadow system of kindness, the other invisible hand. Let’s celebrate it and help it grow in the future, says Rebecca Solnit.
Hot on the heels of a series of international U.F.O. sighting disclosures, the New Zealand government has joined the party and made public 2,000 pages of U.F.O. eyewitness accounts.
The Spanish House of Representatives has rejected new legislation under which hundreds of file-sharing sites that are currently perfectly legal, could have been shut down.
What’s the difference between new ideas that are good, and those that are merely novel? Professor Alan Jacobs insists on asking moral questions as technology progresses.
No more will soldiers’ vision be limited to the socket-embedded spheres that God intended. The Pentagon wants troops to see dangers coming at them from all directions.