If our present scientific achievements pale in comparison to the grand gestures of putting a man on the moon and building nuclear weapons, it may be that our capacity to tell imaginative narratives is suffering.
All Articles
An international survey of school teachers has found that the vast majority believes in myths about the brain and wrongly adapt their lessons to accommodate these myths.
In most respects, neurology’s attack on free will seems to have won the day, not the least reason being that randomness is a far cry from making free and intentioned decisions.
The nation’s highest-profile technology companies are creating some unusual policies in order to encourage women to keep working through the peak of their childbearing years.
Having a much more interesting time with life than your peers is a recipe for social isolation, according to a report published in Psychological Science.
Throughout the developing world, “and increasingly in Africa and Asia,” the single largest occupation for women is agriculture. Yet although they perform much of the labor, women and girls (who […]
And the undeniable physics of how fusion actually works. Image credit: The FIRE Place, via http://fire.pppl.gov/. “Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. …because the […]
Decades of neuroscientific research may be culminating in treatment to help those with short attention spans overcome their lack of focus.
Photo of astronaut Reid Wiseman taken by fellow ISS crewmember Barry E. Wilmore.
“The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.”
An Army Captain advocates for a rethinking of the way the U.S. military trains and promotes its leaders. He vouches for flexible planning, adaptive learning, and a stronger meritocracy.
Workplace survival during a leadership change is an exercise in Social Darwinism (and sometimes involves more bootlicking than we’d like to admit).
The trouble with teenagers is well-known to many parents: they are hormone-driven, thrill-seeking bundles of eros with a shocking inability to think through the consequences of their actions. Adolescents don’t […]
Ebola is starting to pose a serious risk to public health in America. But the threat is not the disease itself. The real danger is a growing epidemic of fear, an infection that spreads much more readily than the virus, is far harder to treat, and which threatens to cause much more sickness and death. The longer this epidemic of fear persists, the greater the likelihood that fear of Ebola in the United States will harm public health far more than the deadly hemorrhagic virus itself.
“Star Trek speaks to some basic human needs: that there is a tomorrow — it’s not all going to be over with a big flash and a bomb; that the human race is improving; that we have things to be proud of as humans. No, ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids — human beings built them, because they’re clever and they work hard. And Star Trek is about those things.”
Where college application season often means reaching for the stars, it’s also important to maintain perspective about your financial limitations.
Thank you notes are great for following up with a prospective employer, reconnecting with an old friend, expressing gratitude for spectacular service, or just letting someone know you care.
Whenever I work with a company or talk to people in the business world, I’m always asked for a model or a set of scientific formulas that can “solve” behavior […]
How many times have you heard a colleague preach about the importance of achieving a healthy work-life balance? For a lot of self-helpers, achieving an equilibrium between the personal and […]
Now that another Texas healthcare worker has contracted Ebola, and was allowed to fly commercial airlines before the diagnosis was made, health officials risk losing the public’s trust.
What the “independent tests” really teach us, if we’re willing to look carefully. Image credit: cold fusion hoax by Juan-Louis Naudin, 2003. “There’s a mark born every minute, and one […]
New research suggests that drinking coffee has more to do with your genes than previously thought.
Can we pack the entire human race into Missouri, the “Show Me” state? We might as well try, because when it comes to making important decisions, we humans have a […]
Tools have changed our genes for millions of years. Paleo-people wouldn’t have been possible without them: artificial aids preceded and enabled their bigger brains. And the slings and arrows of […]
By meditating on having compassion for someone in your life, a new study suggests that you can become a more sympathetic person in as little as two weeks.
“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”
How many times have you heard a politician or school board official vow to improve education by increasing students’ access to technology? Perhaps you’re familiar with the now-dormant plan to […]
The more hours you put in at the office, the more likely you are to become obese, according to a new paper from the US Census Bureau.
The way our political parties approach freedom risks producing individuals who are slovenly free and in pursuit of their most base passions.
Researchers working on a new project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University have begun tracking, in real time, cases of false news and the stories debunking them […]