When Sigmar Polke’s family crossed over to the freedom of West Berlin from the oppression of East Berlin on the subway in 1953, 12-year-old Sigmar feigned sleep to add to […]
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Over the last 20 years, the number of science and technology jobs in America has grown by about 4.2 percent per year—yet the availability of qualified U.S.-born workers in those […]
As Parag and Ayesha wrote yesterday, if today you cannot program computers, it is as though you have the skill to read, but not to write. For this reason, kids […]
Social media’s honeymoon is over, says James Rainey at The L.A. Times, but those bothered by privacy concerns and a distracted lifestyle are rethinking their relationship to Facebook et al rather than quiting.
Digging for the roots of the real estate crisis, Alyssa Katz finds an American culture that believed home ownership would repair broken neighborhoods by increase people’s investment in them.
The U.N. essentially acquiesced to a nuclear Middle East, says Massoud Parsi at Al Jazeera, by approving sanctions against Iran that were watered down by Russia and China to the point of being meaningless.
“The Department of Education is a great, burbling vat of waste,” says the National Review, and since it spends tens of billions of dollars annually with no measurable benefit, it should be eliminated.
Just as European soccer teams have physiotherapists for the World Cup, African teams have witchdoctors who invoke supernatural assistance to put their players ahead of the competition.
As the age at which people finish their education, marry and have children is increasing, a new class of individual between adolescent and adult is emerging, reports the New York Times.
“Having perpetual freedom in our romantic choices can be a mixed blessing,” says philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Zeév. “Boundaries are essential for human behavior.”
Chances are, you don’t know where Manning, South Carolina is. Chances are, you’ve never heard of this small southern town. I only know where it is because it was the […]
People who are consistently deprived of sleep are more likely to think that others are intentionally trying to deprive them of happiness than their well rested counterparts.
“Our tendency to err is also what makes us smart,” says the Boston Globe. Ridding ourselves of the shame associated with being wrong is the first step to becoming more intelligent.
German scientists recently ran four experiments showing that superstitious people performed better at their assigned tasks because they believed luck was on their side.
M.I.T. Professor Bill Mitchell , the director of the university’s Smart Cities research group, died yesterday after a battle with cancer, according to posts on CaringBridge and BoingBoing. When Big […]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been in trouble all year. Pollster’s average of recent polls shows that 53% of Nevadans have an unfavorable impression of Reid compared to […]
In November 2009, nine researchers from MIT’s prestigious Media Lab were among the eleven authors of a paper* that espoused the value of programming as an essential skill for all. […]
Up until just a few hundred years ago most people thought that the Universe was a stable, static place that had been here forever and would continue forever. Today we […]
Loren Coleman is the father of American cryptozoology, or the exploration for animals whose existence is generally doubted. There’s more to it than Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, Coleman says.
A double problem faces the American arts: declining government funding and a shift of priorities in the private sector away from cultural patronage. A new approach is needed.
As women in rising countries like China, Iran and Turkey lead increasingly independent lives, they are having children later in life and in fewer numbers which could prevent the much-feared population crisis.
Americans of European descent have a moral obligation to advocate for legal Mexican immigration because their ancestors once benefited from the same land, writes Conor Friedersdorf for The Atlantic.
Empires, big business and modern communication and transportation technologies account for the rise of sports, which today has reached near-mania, writes Intelligent Life Magazine.
After decades of research and testing, oncologists have found treatments that demonstrably prolong the life of patients with melanoma, lung cancer and leukemia.
The Pentagon is on the lookout for 260,000 classified U.S. embassy messages that have allegedly been given to WikiLeaks by a former American intelligence analyst in Iraq.
Prince Charles, England’s royal environmentalist, believes that the Quran teaches important environmental lessons such as being one with nature and living within the environment’s limits.
“As U.S. employment patterns evolve, a diploma is no longer a guarantee of a better job and higher pay,” says the L.A. Times. Vocational labor is gaining most as the economy recovers.
“Far from making us stupid, new media technologies are the only things that will keep us smart,” says Steven Pinker in his Op-Ed for the New York Times.
Leave it to an Italian art publisher to do an American artist right. Skira’s Edward Hopper, distributed in the United States by Rizzoli, may be the finest single volume visually […]
Following on the somewhat silly Times cover piece on how distracted we all are, itself in opposition to Steven Pinker’s brilliant Times Op-Ed today, Walter Kirn’s contribution to The Atlantic’s […]