Is it a coincidence that the Wall Street bankers responsible for the market crash were men, or do aggressive risk-taking strategies befall the male gender more naturally?
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“I don’t own a computer, have no idea how to work one,” Woody Allen told an interviewer recently. Author Jim Hold asks if those of us with computers are really better off?
Civil resistance usually cannot survive systematic and violent repression, and it is still often suppressed by authoritarian governments. At least in the Arab world, this seems to be changing.
Many of this year’s top movies portray dark themes or flawed characters. One culture watcher says they mirror this moment in history where anti-heroes are the more common stock.
Biologist and popular author Richard Dawkins says that human intelligence is undervalued these days. We must do away with rulebooks and start trusting our own judgment, he says.
Abraham Verghese, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, offers surprising reasons for why C.T. scans should not replace the ritual of doctors examining patients’ bodies.
Context, oblique cultural allusions, metaphors and so on are par for the course in human-to-human conversation, but entirely beyond machines, says a Turing Test participant.
When the brain juggles two—or more—languages, there are positive consequences for the brain, says Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at York University in Toronto.
Simple marketing strategies can be very effective at getting kids to eat healthier lunches, like putting fruit in an attractive bowl and replacing carrots with ‘x-ray vision carrots’.
Waq al-waq has decided, in keeping with protests in Yemen, to keep a running tally of people resigning from the ruling GPC. It very much looks like people are abandoning […]
One of the unavoidable realities of going to look at art in a museum is the feeling that you the viewer are being viewed yourself—especially by your fellow patrons. In […]
The blogging scientist Minerva agrees with ME against the transhumanist on the future pressure to design or enhance your offspring or else. She’s surprised that it’s possible to agree with someone […]
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s remarks last week were in keeping with his ongoing effort to restructure the armed forces and create what he has called a “truly 21st century” military.
The idea of a coming Singularity refers to a point in time of radical exponential progress, beyond which our minds can’t imagine—the technological counterpart to an event horizon in a black hole.
A little over a week ago I wrote a post on what I saw as the tribal jockeying that was taking place against the backdrop of the protests in Yemen. […]
AS the United Nations Security Council meets in New York, Secretary General Ban ki moon is calling for “decisive” action to be taken against the Libyan regime. The UN Secretary […]
Putting on a bright face at work could leave you feeling miserable. Workers who fake a smile to keep their customers and colleagues happy could be making themselves depressed.
Rolling Stone magazine caused turmoil in the U.S. military this week reporting that a commander in Afghanistan ordered a “psychological operations” team to manipulate U.S. senators.
The notion that science and religion are at war is one of the great dogmas of the present age. However, the views of many scientists turn out to be less rigidly doctrinaire than suspected.
A new book looking back on The Feminine Mystique explains why Betty Friedan might have paved the way for equal marriages by blowing the roof off male-dominated couplings.
We all know that women like funny guys but empirical evidence for this phenomenon has been sorely lacking. Fortunately, a recent study tests whether humor helps men pick up women.
Defense Secretary Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan.
Starting your own business often means going it alone on health insurance—a risky prospect for any individual, let alone a family. Reform will encourage entrepreneurs, says Ezra Klein.
A new study from the University of California has found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world, not just online, thanks to their use of social media.
Lawrence Principe of Johns Hopkins University wants to rehabilitate alchemy. He believes that most alchemists were respectable knowledge seekers working with well constructed theories.
The security afforded by having a government job is worth approximately a pay increase of 15%, says Art Carden. This should inform the debate over collective bargaining in Madison.
LGBT advocate Tim McCarthy argues the cause of same-sex marriage is not the best issue strategically for the LGBT community.
We’ve finally made it to the weekend, so I thought I’d leave you with a shiny new image from the NASA Earth Observatory folks. The new ASTER image (below) captured […]
Heavy gun fire has been heard raking the streets of Tripoli, as Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi makes a defiant stand. There can be no doubt now that he will stop at absolutely nothing to hang on to power. What, if anything, should the international community be doing to help?
Are people naturally good or evil? How much of our mental life is unconscious? Are our desires hard-wired by evolution? On the evening of Monday, March 21st, renowned psychologist and […]