In the days of the Wild West, the posters used to read ‘Wanted! Dead or Alive’. Now in the White House we must presume they read, ‘Wanted! Dead,Not Alive!’ This […]
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Pitzer College, a small liberal arts school in Southern California, will launch a Department of Securlar Studies this fall: “It’s not about arguing ‘Is there a God or not?’ ” Mr. […]
A growing body of research challenges whether most humans see “positive” emotions as better than ordinary ones—whether feeling happy actually leads, in the end, to a good life.
Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen argues that evil should be understood as a lack of empathy—a condition he argues can be measured and is susceptible to education and treatment.
The real reason why we succeed in our relationships and careers is the strength of our unconscious, according to David Brooks, who wants to unravel the power of our inner voice.
I briefly wrote about digital dementia in my post about demand driven education. The term deals with the fact that people tend to outsource information to digital devices we had […]
In a constantly changing world, it sometimes seems that our only anchor is personal character but put it to the test and this supposedly durable good begins to look quite flimsy.
Celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death, while allegedly cathartic, will likely bring unhealthy feelings of vengeance to the surface, opening old wounds and creating new ones, say psychologists.
It’s a common and tired trope of storytelling that the geek shall inherit the Earth. Revenge of the Nerds might actually be the pinnacle of this geeky genre. What makes […]
Francis Fukuyama tells Big Think about the pressures that one must overcome in rethinking positions–in his case, his views on the Iraq War–and how he overcame those pressures.
I was in Catholic community center today for a sporting event when a brightly colored poster on a bulletin board caught my eye. The picture was of a parachutist falling […]
Last night was Iowa State University’s largest-ever commencement for graduate students: 150+ Ph.D. students and another 280+ Master’s students. I had the pleasure of graduating three of my doctoral advisees. Pam […]
Jeffrey Potteiger, an exercise scientist at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, says that calisthenics is again becoming popular, though it’s health benefits have long been known.
Praying and believing in a god might secure a healthier existence for your soul in the hereafter, but it doesn’t necessarily do much for the body in this life, a new study shows.
Coffee, sex, blowing your nose and getting mad are everyday triggers that can raise your risk of a type of stroke by causing blood vessels to burst, say researchers in the Netherlands.
Your overall happiness may depend in part on whether you drew the long or short version of a gene, say researchers who have uncovered a genetic link to happiness in a study of 2,500 Americans.
Large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly testing their drugs in Eastern Europe and Asia thanks to less red tape and lower operating costs, but is that good for American consumers?
Physicists at Stanford, who have spearheaded the billion-dollar Gravity Probe B mission, have announced that they have found Einstein’s missing inch, once again proving the correctness of general relativity. According […]
Last week I marked my third blogiversary – and acknowledged that I started this blog looking for information on an eruption that had started in Chile. That eruption turned out […]
Studies in neuroscience over the last few decades have confirmed an idea originally suggested by philosophers and psychologists: how much the brain can change in response to our experiences.
How has growing up amidst the specter of war shaped the modern teenager? And how do we explain to the young why one man’s death is something to celebrate?
The fabled planetary alignment predicted to occur in 2012 is actually happening right now. Is this a sign of the Apocalypse, or just eye candy for stargazers?
Change is good. It introduces the new and tests the assumptions of the old. I have made a change in the publishing strategy of disruptivedemographics.com. Beginning May 2011 ‘Disruptive Demographics’ will […]
Liposuction is often billed as a permanent surgical solution to unwanted fat deposits. Various types of fat-sucking surgery have been available for over three decades, but these procedures have rarely […]
House Republicans are backing off their controversial plan to privatize Medicare, for now. The Congressman who would have been in charge of translating the policy proposal into a law has […]
Here’s a question for you… Let’s say that my daughter’s taking Geometry and the homework assignment from her textbook asks her to prove that the three perpendicular bisectors of the […]
[UPDATE: And the winner is… Suzie Linch, who submitted Nathan Barber’s blog, The Next Generation of Educational Leadership. Congratulations, Suzie!] Does your local principal or superintendent blog? Do you read the […]
The Urn is 100% biodegradable, made of coconut shell, compacted peat, and cellulose.
You’ve probably never heard of them, yet they’ve changed your life, says Frederick E. Allen of the latest innovators inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Why are we good at reasoning in some cases and hopelessly biased in others? Did reasoning evolve just to help us win arguments? Argumentative Theory says yes.