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 […]
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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 […]
Scientists researching mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever have recently succeeded at “vaccinating” one generation of mosquito which then passes immunity onto its progeny.
When it comes to diseases like Alzheimer’s, it is worth asking whether there is not something unethical about offering people genetic tests for conditions that are not yet treatable.
One of the hottest ideas in business and technology is the idea of leveraging gaming technology to solve real world problems. Now is the time for the healthcare industry to take notice.
Despite its barbaric reputation, medical care during the Civil War helped dawn a new era of modern medicine thanks to advances brought about in anesthesiology and organized triage.
The federal government is offering grant money to states that pay Medicaid patients to live healthier—the program is an experiment in deflating the ballooning costs of American healthcare.
University of Montreal researches have isolated a gene that predisposes individuals to both autism and epilepsy—genetic disorders that affect the communication of information between neurons.
Very brief update as I spent all day in the Department of Geological Science at Michigan State and gave a talk so, I’m a bit exhausted (but thanks for a […]
You’ve probably heard of the trend among America’s city dwellers to grow their own food, but you probably haven’t heard of urbanites raising their own livestock. In a guest post […]
Plato’s notion of the Philosopher-King, guardian of the utopian city of Kallipolis, is a great metaphor for understanding the education of the soul, not a recipe for tyranny.
Farmers markets are wildly popular among the urban elite in Washington, D.C. and other urban areas across the country. In a guest post today, Melissa Winn considers efforts to expand […]
Yesterday the City of London moved against the fish porters of Billingsgate Market in London, revoking their licences in a move that would be more familiar to mediaeval Knights than […]
After reading the David Brooks New York Times column that lauded the courage and guts of GOP Rep. Paul Ryan to actually put together an “adult” congressional budget, one that […]
The aftershocks of the controversy surrounding the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery’s decision to drop David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from their exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire […]
Bringing philosophers into the corporation is not an entirely new idea. But in our new era of computational power the Philosopher-Kings will be determining how each of us lives, thinks and feels.
The recent 7.4 magnitude earthquake and tsunami to hit northern Japan on April 7 underscores the delicate situation at the Fukushima reactors. Although workers had to evacuate the site, preliminary […]