Among the appalling sights Primo Levi witnessed at Auschwitz was the fervent prayer of a prisoner grateful to be spared the ovens. “I see and hear old Kuhn praying aloud,” […]
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Something rather weird happened last Thursday. In one the the regular “Spring Cleaning” briefings on its developer blog, Google announced that they would limit the number of requests you may […]
Choice is good. It’s always nice to have options. It makes us feel more in control; it supports our vision of ourselves as “deciders” in our own lives. But choice can also come with negative consequences.
I’ll be posting my summer schedule soon – it is a busy summer for me this year for a number of reasons (as you’ll see). So, to keep things interesting, […]
Older workers are news these days. Consider two contrasting New York Times stories reported on the same day. Nelson Schwartz writes in Easy Out the Gray-Haired. Or Not., that older […]
A long weekend right about now does wonders for getting a little focus back, especially after such a busy week with the eruption of Grímsvötn. I even got a weekend […]
It’s 2011. If you’re invisible to the world, aren’t you also irrelevant to the world? I use the Rapportive plugin for Gmail. It’s a pretty powerful little add-on that gives […]
Adding to the current debate on downside of search filters and algorithms, Daniel Terdiman interviews author Eli Pariser on why a hyper-personalized Web is bad for you.
The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage from another country can constitute an act of war, opening the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.
Technology and constant connectivity offer us the promise of never being bored again. But at what price? Cognitive overload, lost concentration…
Could games’ fundamental principles—such as rewarding success, removing the sting from failure—be applied elsewhere, such as in education policy?
Should companies be forced to adopt document management systems to help ease the legal discovery process? Some litigants face a nightmare amid shambolic info management.
Elm Point and Buffalo Bay Point are quite possibly America’s most obscure exclaves in Canada.
Everybody’s a critic, especially when it comes to public art. Mix in religion, a beloved figure, and modern art and you’ve got yourself all the ingredients for controversy. The recently […]
In his book, The Heart and the Fist, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens writes about the Greek conception of phronesis. A kind of practical wisdom (a poor translation, but the […]
My man Ta-Nehisi Coates has proven once again why I always click the link to his blog over at The Atlantic when the minutia of the internet starts trending towards […]
Sometimes when you see a particularly compelling advertisement in a store window, you might stop and look at it. Now that advertisement is looking back at you too. Immersive Labs, […]
Historically, a European has led the International Monetary Fund, but emerging economies want that to change. While China is acting demure, it has spoken against “obsolete” Western control.
The market alliance of the three right-leaning nations spanning most of South America’s Pacific coast gives investors better exposure to assets linked to the region’s natural resources.
Germany’s government agreed early today to shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022, making it the first major industrialized nation in the last 25 years to go nuclear-free.
It is past time to celebrate Iraq’s veterans with a welcome-home parade, says Lawrence Kaplan. America has broken its promise to not repeat the Vietnam-era disrespect of its soldiers.
President Obama has shown himself to be weak in his dealings with the Middle East, says Robert Fisk, and the Arab world is turning its back and shaping its future without American influence.
Looking to past elections to predict the outcome of one soon to come doesn’t usually work that well. Back in October 2008, I looked to eight past elections to try […]
Marc Goodman tells Big Think that in the future “the virtual agents of good and evil will do battle in cyberspace–making this a very interesting field to be in!”
Psychology and neuroscience research indicates that willpower is something that can be developed and enhanced with practice. With that in mind, ex-smokers are willpower kings.
Vivid commercials are incredibly good at tricking the brain’s long-term memory center into believing that the scene we just watched on television actually happened. And it happened to us.
For some people, seeing pain in someone else is more than emotionally distressing: they feel the pain in their own body too. Now some of the pathways involved have been identified.
How do thoughts arise in your brain? Rather than selecting them consciously, the brain’s default-mode network analyzes a situation and determines what your priorities should be.
Krista and Tatiana Hogan are four-year-old twins conjoined at the head, their brains linked by neural pathways that allow them to share the same physical experiences, their doctor says.
Buzz has been building about the possibility of that Sarah Palin will run for President after all. Palin announced on Thursday that she will launch a bus tour of key […]