Satellite TV and social media have been front and center recently for two reasons: their role in the Mideast upheavals rolling across the region, and debates over whether social media […]
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Our hyper efficient, always on modern lives don’t often account very well for those who are sick and shut in. Last week, though, I found myself going back to my […]
We didn’t mind Maureen Dowd’s dismantling of (whatever remains of) the mythologizing of Dylan as a hero for/of protest. There was a moment in time when Dylan was hero for […]
Reporting from last weekend’s Shakespeare Association of America conference in Bellevue, Washington, Bernadette Meyers brings us the top five ideas.
At the end of last week, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation officially apologised for hacking into the phones of politicians and celebrities. In doing so the company judged that it was […]
If we all became gamers, there would be more “epic wins” in the real world, says video game designer Jane McGonigal during her 2010 TED talk.
The more unwilling Binyamin Netanyahu is to make a leap of history, the more dangerous it’s going to get.
I’ve got a brief update about the activity at Taal in the Philippines to start us off: The news of a potential eruption at Taal continues – and the latest […]
The other day I participated in a bloggingheads discussion of Yemen with Charles Schmitz of Towson University. You can view our conversation here. And to tide you over until the […]
Not unlike the generation that survived the Great Depression and spent the rest of their lives pinching pennies, some middle-class Americans are developing a lasting sense of thrift.
With oil now over $112 per barrel, is it time to panic? While the American psyche is disproportionately influenced by oil prices, our economy is suited to weather the current storm.
Though terms of a “road map” to peace in Libya are unclear, the African Union says Gaddafi has accepted conditions for a ceasefire between Libyan rebels and government troops.
While China’s rise as a global power is often a foregone conclusion, it faces crucial challenges in the years ahead: a real estate bubble, a transitioning economy and political unrest.
China’s rising credit agency Dagong Global has downgraded the credit rating of the U.S., Britain and Germany while raising China’s. Is power in the global financial network in flux?
In February, as part of the Science in Society Film and Lecture series at American University, we hosted a screening of the PBS series The Human Spark. Hosted by Alan […]
So I’ve taken a break from blogging for a while for several reasons. I was at Mercer University in Macon, GA for a great conference on Alexis de Tocqueville. I gave the […]
So I’ve taken a break from blogging for a while for several reasons. I was at Mercer University at Macon for a great conference on Alexis de Tocqueville. I gave […]
It’s not easy for most urban dwellers to get their daily dose of nature moving from one concrete box to another. Habitat Horticulture tries to solve this problem by painting walls […]
Another quick weekend post! Etna has sprung back to life as April opens, with new eruptions from the Southeast Crater Cone. Friday and Saturday (April 8-9), the Italian volcano produced […]
On average, a brain’s short term memory can only hold between five and seven pieces of information at a time. Can steps be taken to expand the capacity of our memory—and our brains generally?
When asked to observe a man making mundane decision in his apartment, a sample of people placed greater emphasis on the importance of individual decision making in life.
Couples don’t fight about what they identify in surveys: money, sex, raising the kids, in-laws, or housework. Lovers fight when they believe their partners don’t care about how they feel.
With endless updates and alerts from social media informing us how much fun our friends are having in their lives, a new psychological problem of the digital era is arising: The fear of missing out.
Despite our legislative attempts at equality, the beautiful people of the world still have it better. Numerous studies show that attractive people get better treatment in nearly every scenario.
A century ago, governments began to assert their authority over poor people and immigrants whose bad behavior was supposedly spreading epidemic diseases like smallpox, cholera and typhus. Cops in Boston […]
The Earl of Oxford rears his ugly head again in a major new Hollywood film that claims Shakespeare never wrote a single word.
A protest in Toronto last weekend against sexual assault stereotypes, affectionately called the “Sluts March”, reminded me that I have omitted (or perhaps avoided) talking about rape here on Dollars […]
Listening to Mozart does not improve your child’s cognitive development. Reading Shakespeare will.
Passive acts, like listening to Mozart, will not make your child smarter. On the other hand, active engagement–learning to play an instrument or processing words–improves mental functioning. For instance, there […]
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the Republican’s new budget proposal, is courageous in one sense. By proposing to privatize Medicare and reduce Medicare benefits, he is risking his […]