It’s not appealing to authority that’s the problem; it’s the false authorities and what comes next if you accept their nonsense. “When a scientist says something, his colleagues must ask […]
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If you’re not particularly connected to international political happenings (i.e. you’re most Americans), it may come as a surprise that Scottish voters will be answering the big million pound/euro question […]
Facebook recently announced that it will display warnings beside satirical content. In this post we look at the flaws and implications of recent research on the spread of false information on Facebook.
What is Punk? Punk isn’t about mohawks or studded leather, says Henry Rollins – it’s about resistance to tyranny in any form. How Art Can Change Society, with Sarah Lewis Sarah […]
I enjoy “griefing“, which is when people use aspects of a system that make that system less fun for others. It’s a term normally used in multiplayer video games. As […]
Too much of the wrong type can be deadly, but not all mercuric compounds are created equal. Today, we have a guest post courtesy of Adrianne Stone. Adrianne is a graduate […]
Steven Mazie has a post on the front page today about Ben Bernanke’s Princeton commencement speech this year, and his call to the graduating class to “share their luck with […]
Conservative John Fund, writing in the National Review,
It turns out that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe in October wasn’t a gaffe at all: it was, as some observed at the time, a reflection of how the Republican […]
Let’s say you’re just now tuning in to reports that the world will end on December 21 when the Mayan calendar resets to zero. Maybe you’re one of the 35 […]
Modern campaigns have rarely focused on the issues, but in the 2012 election the level of moral outrage and anger is unprecedented. Even before the campaign, America was divided, but […]
–Guest post by Nicole Federica, American University student. News reports tracking the obesity epidemic in the United States offer a range of possible explanations for the problem. These include government […]
In his 2010 book “The Audacity to Win,” Obama 2008 campaign director David Plouffe explained that the goal of the campaign was not only to ensure high participation and turn […]
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11, U.S. Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power To declare War” Rep. Ron Paul in the U.S. House of Representatives, October 3, 2002: “The process by which […]
–Guest post by American University student Becca Stern. People are often scared of topics they do not understand, explain Matthew R. Hartings and Declan Fahy in their article “Communicating Chemistry […]
Following the demise of cap and trade legislation, green group leaders acknowledged that despite spending several hundred million dollars to pass the bill, they were unable to create public demand […]
In Monday’s GOP primary debate, Newt Gingrich earned praise from conservatives while drawing justifiable anger from many for his labeling of Barack Obama as the “food stamp president.” As the […]
After watching a Republican presidential debate, I often look for something factual to read as an antidote to all of the distortions and lies the candidates spew about the Obama […]
–Guest post by Kristen Moses, American University graduate student. On July 20, 2011, the UN declared a famine in two regions of southern Somalia due to the worst drought in […]
Capitalist societies believe in the possibility of endless growth. But Plato and other classical philosophers would have begged to differ.
Building on the themes he emphasized in an article last month at Rolling Stone magazine, Al Gore has announced a September event to launch The Climate Reality Project. The 24 […]
A frame device is a catchphrase that instantly conveys a specific meaning and storyline, sparking conversations and trains of thought about why an event might be a problem, who or […]
This semester, 22 undergraduate and graduate students from a diversity of majors at American University have participated in a new course that I created titled “Science, Environment and the Media.” […]
One of the many advantages of You Tube and the social networking sites, is that it is possible to get a real measure of the de-regulated, ‘opinion led’ television the […]
Perhaps it was unintended, but two or three weeks ago, at the height of the protests that was gripping the great cities of Egypt, the Director General of the BBC, […]
Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference… […]
When I first met Tony Blair in 1993 at his house in Islington in North London, I was struck by two things. First, the man who had just recently become […]
Nicolas Kristof recently wrote a column in the New York Times urging Americans to teach their children Spanish before Chinese. Chinese has become quite the coveted prize for New Yorkers: “Chinese […]
As America becomes increasingly diverse, many school districts are experiencing changes in their traditional student populations. When districts have significant increases in the number of students of color and/or students […]
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth).
Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay.
Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.