I participate in a Unitarian Universalist spiritual community. The UU faith has some basic beliefs, largely universal truths about how to be a good person, but when it comes […]
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Death is big business. The projected revenue of the funeral industry is projected to be $16.2 billion in 2014. While it’s tough to consider the economics of death when a […]
SEATTLE – Bono calls economist Jeffrey Sachs “the squeaky wheel that roars.” To me, Sachs is the Bono of economics – a guy with impressive intelligence, passion, and powers of […]
On October 17th, 2005, comedian Stephen Colbert introduced the persona “Stephen Colbert” on the first episode of The Colbert Report by also introducing to the world the concept of “Truthiness.” […]
Star Talk Radio is one of the best things to have ever hit the podcast bin. While I’m a big fan of Cosmos—despite its having the worst music supervisor in […]
The loudest and largest generation in history, the baby boomers, are older. Their numbers and needs will place unprecedented demands on aging services in a time of workforce shortages and […]
Chicago native Judy Cohen Gerowitz became Judy Chicago in 1970 for many reasons. One was to throw off her father’s and husband’s names and the male dominance behind that practice. […]
IN THE old days of the three European missions – imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism – scholars insisted on the existence of Asian “philosophies” and, naturally, they called Asian thinkers “philosophers.” […]
David Shenk: I think the really dangerous and oppressive myth of IQ is that IQ tests are identifying some kind of quantity of intelligence that we are born with and that we have this static amount of intelligence that we’re going to carry with us throughout life.
I think that it’s great to inspire new generations of thinkers; it’s terrible to create new authority.
When it comes to making predictions, thinkers who are hedgehogs barely beat “dart-throwing chimps.” Despite that, hedgehogs hog the spotlight.
This week the agency put out a Request for Information in hopes of attracting creative thinkers who can help them “achieve the most science at minimum cost.”
The best argument against German Unification came from French writer François Mauriac: “J’aime tellement l’Allemagne que je préfère qu’il y en ait deux”. It takes an American to propel that […]
We don’t think or exist in empty space; we need nourishment from the earth, literally, to live and create.
When the citadels of knowledge for knowledge’s sake collapse, the marketers rush in to fill the void. We’re in greater need now than ever of epistemology – a careful, systematic examination of what we know and how we know it.
Your first philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and one strange new face. Why the first books people read about Stoicism should be by one of these guys. On Stoicism Graduation season […]
It’s explanation all the way down even though we won’t get to it because the explanations are infinite and we’re finite. That’s Spinoza’s guide.
One of my favorite BIG THINKERS, Dave Berreby, criticizes our Declaration of Independence. Here’s the Declaration’s theory: We have the right to life, and we have the right to the […]
Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts.
Here are all of the arguments against Edward Snowden. This is why they are wrong.
How do we get more and more people involved in creative class work using their minds, using their creativity?
It’s a great luxury for a society to take it’s 18 to 21 year olds and to let them develop as thinkers.
One thing that distinguishes us conservatives from libertarians is that we’re actually worried about growing inequality in America. We’re not that obsessed by the bare fact of economic inequality, but […]
1. The Bill Gates Condom The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will award a $100,000 grant to the person who invents a next-generation condom that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in […]
Mark Bauerlein, author of The Dumbest Generation, responded quite positively to the final point of my appreciative comments on his book. I said liberal education is always countercultural. Mark wisely […]
The Monster Dreamer uses a sensor-equipped headset to interpret children’s reactions to various creatures and create a 3D-printed toy that contains the features they find most interesting.
I think if you’re the driest accountant with the plastic pocket pen protector it’s in how you interact with the world.
I think that it’s great to inspire new generations of thinkers; it’s terrible to create new authority.
Christopher Hitchens, Demystifier Extraordinaire.
We’re constantly editing our day with blinking.