Multiculturalism critic Kenan Malik: The very thing that diversity is good for is the very thing that multiculturalism as a political process undermines.
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Steve Jobs isn’t saying why he’s taking a medical leave. Slate asks: Is that fair to Apple investors?
Would we celebrate this tableau of human good nature so enthusiastically if we did not also fear, somewhere in our hearts, that we might have reacted differently?
George Monbiot asks: “Who threatens us most — peaceful campaigners or a private militia run by police chiefs?”
A border collie in South Carolina has the largest vocabulary of any known dog. She knows 1,022 nouns, a record that may help explain how children acquire language.
Could online galleries prove a successful sales innovation for a struggling art industry? The first virtual contemporary art fair is about to be launched.
I’ve yet to go to the cinema to watch ‘Kings Speech’, which is currently the talk of Hollywood. Those who have come back enthused, including some of those who are not […]
Staying Grounded Last week’s out-of-nowhere smash hit “Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising” isn’t just a source of hilarity, it’s also a good reminder that we as marketers often […]
Every Wednesday, Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science. Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Tomas Aftalion: Will it be possible to transfer one’s memory into a synthetic medium in our lifetime?
BIG THINK displays a large number wonderful accounts of how science today is transforming our lives–appealing to our hopes, our pride, and, occasionally, our humility. I thought I’d share with […]
If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, would he be counseling us on how to find happiness, or would he merely be setting an example of how to […]
Turkle rightly asserts that such familial association is what we will all come to have with machines, and that children are the only ones who understand it right from the start. Children recognize the powerful magnetism of robots that are programmed to respond to human affection (by purring, chatting, batting eye lashes and so forth). Some of them say that they would like to give a robot as a companion to their grandparents, but worry that the grandparents might prefer the robot to them in the long run.
Not a lot of time today for a substantive post, but seems like a good day for a new Mystery Volcano Photo. We’re into the third decade of photos, so […]
MIT ethnographer Sherry Turkle warns of the dangers of social technology after herself experiencing what was like a schoolgirl crush on a human-looking machine.
Scientists have come a step closer to gaining complete control over a mind, even if that mind belongs to a creature the size of a grain of sand.
As soon as we start saying our lives or our planet from a cosmic perspective is meaningless, we are no longer engaged in science but science-fiction.
In the aftermath of the (Tucson shootings), something has changed. No one can say how long the calm will endure. When it fades, perhaps the memory will leave us all in a better place.
Europe is in deep crisis — because its proudest achievement, the single currency adopted by most European nations, is now in danger.
Ross Douthat argues that the press and Palin have been at war with each other almost from the first, but their mutual antipathy looks increasingly like co-dependency.
The fall of the Tunisian president Ben Ali played out for all the world on Twitter, some dubbing it a “Twitter Revolution” like the election protests in Iran and Moldovia.
Internet debate can be coarse, but it is holding journalists and politicians to account, writes Boris Johnson. What are we going to do about the lawyers, he asks.
A new film explores how globalization has resulted in crises of the economy, the environment and the human spirit — and points the way to a new path.
Faced with a public health crisis, Portugal decriminalized the possession of all illicit drugs. Nearly a decade later, there’s evidence that its great drug experiment may have worked.
It’s been a tough week in Georgia, with heavy snowfall last weekend that paralyzed the northern half of the state. Now businesses are playing catch up. The mail is being […]
The shootings in Tucson, Arizona appear to have had a truly cathartic effect in the United States. It is almost as though the random actions of a mad man have […]
Last week, I was sharply critical of the way Sarah Palin handled accusations that she was in some way to blame for the Tucson shooting. It is easy to understand […]
Yes, a rare Sunday post, mostly because I’m not sure I’ll have a time tomorrow morning for a post as it will be the first day of the new semester […]
Forget that old tagline about the Internet being an information “superhighway”. The online world is an information battlefield with pranksters and pragmatists struggling to be heard.
Mysticism has no past, no genealogy, and yet it walks and knows why. How do we account for the religious imagination in the U.S. while Europe grows more and more skeptical?
Prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs have more than doubled in the U.S. over the past 15 years, often given for conditions for which there is scant evidence they work.