“The American dream is the ideology of the housing bubble.” Christopher Caldwell says the American Dream has virtually disappeared since the housing crisis.
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Following reports that performers in ‘Spider-Man’ had sustained injuries while using the production’s complex flying equipment, the Broadway musical has been postponed.
“What has become of the rule of law in the U.S.?” Rewritten bankruptcy provisions reduce indebted homeowners to servitude, says Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
Forget about 3-D movies and television, says the Christian Science Monitor. 3-D holograms, once seen only in science-fiction movies like Star Wars, are swiftly becoming a reality.
The city that kept out the Republicans and banned Happy Meals has a long history of doing things its own way. The Independent on the history of San Fran.
Research into the possibility of engineering a better climate is progressing at an impressive rate—and meeting strong opposition. The Economist reports.
Award wining Picasso biographer John Richardson examines the painter’s alleged support of communism. Picasso remained sympathetic to Catholicism, Richardson says.
“Ridiculing Tea Party shenanigans is a serious error.” Noam Chomsky says we must first understand why justly angry citizens have been drawn to the right.
The world is lousy with aspiring novelists who will probably never be published. Intelligent Life Magazine offers insight into what keeps them writing.
What can be said of revelatory moments in life whose meaning seems beyond the reach of words? Should anything be said at all? Philosopher Roger Scruton on the ineffable.
Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad […]
Jill Lepore, in her New Yorker piece on Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life (and on, more broadly, biography), put it beautifully: “There is no humility in monumental biography. But there […]
If we are truly worried about mitigating the social effects of drug use, we are likely to have more success regulating it than prohibiting it entirely.
Nation editor Chris Hayes will not be subbing for Keith Olbermann after all. I posted earlier that he was disinvited but, that was incorrect. Hayes tweeted: “OK: I’m not filling […]
What do you think of the advertisement below? Does it warm your heart? Does it bore you? Perhaps the answer depends on whether you’re a parent, or even more specifically, […]
Psychiatrists see a lot of people who are, to use the technical term, screwed up. Psychiatrists’ talk, then, often turns around curing, or ameliorating, or at least preventing “bad” behaviors […]
Several weeks ago, we featured OpenIDEO – innovation consultancy IDEO’s collaborative platform for concepting and implementing social-good projects. Open Planet Ideas, a partnership between Sony and WWF, is using IDEO’s […]
The recent shuttle launch has a strange passenger: a 330-pound humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, or R2 for short. It’s the first humanoid robot to be sent into space, and […]
MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after Politico reported that he made campaign contributions to progressive Democrats: Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of […]
Busy day for me here at the Department, so I just wanted to highlight some news, both from Merapi and beyond Merapi: The NASA Earth Observatory posted some great IR thermal images of a […]
Each and every democracy is sovereign. Each and every country, even if it is in alliance with others, has the sovereign right to make its own choices – albeit observing […]
After finishing The Help by Kathryn Stockett a couple of days ago, I just put the book down and sat still for a few minutes, letting the final remnants of […]
“Text messagers and computer gamers aren’t alone in the willful misspelling department. RNA molecules do it, too.”
In Senegal, money from Europe represents close to 10% of GDP. The flows of capital generated by migrant workers exceeds the foreign development aid Senegal receives.
“Psychopaths are a paradox. Many of them, like Bundy, are intellectually high functioning, and they clearly know right from wrong. They are not delusional, they are socially inept.”
“…green movements have continued to grow… What has changed is that a powerful counter-movement, led by corporate-funded thinktanks, has waged war on green policies.”
“The whole focus on ‘focus’ is…an act of intellectual cowardice — a way to criticize President Obama’s record without explaining what you would have done differently.”
“The United Nations has named oil-rich Norway as the country with the best quality of life, followed by Australia and New Zealand, while Asia has made the biggest strides.”
“Much of the discussion about torture concentrates on the moral and ethical dilemmas involved, but…these arguments…are irrelevant if torture doesn’t work in the first place.”