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A Jewish state in Alaska?

If you’re looking for the blueprint for a better tomorrow, you’ll find it in Rutger Bregman’s Utopia for Realists. Its premise is simple: we should adopt a universal basic income plan for all citizens, work less, and open up our borders.

Passport specifications are regulated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the relative power of your country’s passport says a lot about its standing in thew world.

On the map, the changing fortunes of French baby boys’ names look like battles in a weird, unreported war. 

Democracy is happening like never before, and it’s exploiting our deepest fears and failures.

We heard the news today, 46 years ago, that the Beatles were no more.  But who was the real killer in the magical mystery tour of the Fab Four’s finale?

All text involves translation. Either from reality or imagination into language, or between languages. Can the language that perfectly fit physics translate every pattern under the sun? Well, nothing in physics chooses…

The Campbell Soup Company says it will go ahead and label foods that contain GMO ingredients, breaking industry ranks on the issue holding up wider adoption of agricultural biotechnology.

The history of Guy Fawkes and the use of his likeness.

Jon Acuff discusses the four moments you’ll encounter in your career and the key to navigating them.

Freud was much more than the Id and Oedipus, and he may be the answer to today’s problems.

Open borders would lead to a massive wave of immigration and probably the collapse of American constitutional democracy… though one economist says that’s not a bad thing.

The pictures of Stuart Palley tell a story that no words can. “the way to create art is to burn and destroyordinary concepts and to substitute themwith new truths that […]

Our cities don’t burn like they used to.

As open-ended questions and situations require innovative problem-solving strategies, a little bit of ambiguity can make for a more thoughtful workplace.

This isn’t the Matrix. Should you wish to face the ugly reality, there’s no red pill you can swallow.

High-wire artist Philippe Petit describes his process of compressing chaos in order to build a model for creative output.

A team of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania has successfully modeled how group decisions form from seeming chaos.

“When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life,” minimalist artist Agnes Martin once explained. “It is not in the eye; it is in my mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.” In the first comprehensive survey of her art at the Tate Modern, in London, England, the exhibition Agnes Martin strives to guide viewers to that “awareness of perfection” Martin strove to embody in her minimalist, geometrically founded art. Rather than the cold, person-less brand of modernist minimalism, Martin’s work personifies the warm humanity of Buddhist editing down to essentials. At the same time, surveying Martin’s art and thinking allows us to revisit the feminist critiques of minimalism and shows how Martin’s stepping back from the bustle of the New York art scene freed her to find “a beautiful mind” — not just for women, but for everyone.

Almost a century after its dissolution, two hilarious anecdotes are the Free State’s main legacy.

Comparing “astronaut” to “cowboy” ethics can show that Locke’s limits on liberty need to be revised. We once could see that pitting self-interest against collective self-preservation wasn’t rational. Me-opic and logically unworkable ideas that economics sometimes encourage have made that harder to see.   

Confessions of an Outlaw: A Creativity Workshop, with Philippe Petit High-wire artist Philippe Petit, who four decades ago performed illegally between the World Trade Center towers, explains how his personal […]

A new wave of authors — think of them as Richard Dawkins’ more evolved descendants — is building the case for a “new atheism” that focuses more on what it values than on a blanket rejection of God.

Despite the booming use of Internet porn and conversations skeptical of sexual norms pervading popular culture, physical sexuality remains restricted to private life.

When two giant ellipticals get together, the astronomical chaos is beautiful. “Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” –Yousuf […]

Fingerprints are unique, but they aren’t a secure method of signing into your accounts, according to a recent report. Jan Krissler was able to replicate a politician’s from a few photographs.

The forgotten aspects of art history will always be the most intriguing. Digging up the dead storylines of art history, whether in the distant or the recent past, will never end, mostly thanks to forces that buried the facts, if not the bodies, for whatever agenda. Artists and Prophets: A Secret History of Modern Art 1872-1972 at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt resurrects German visionaries and Jesus wannabes from the late 19th and early 20th centuries to look at how their exploits and artistic creations helped shape the course of German and European modern art. It also shines light on how the impact of those figures fell into obscurity as another casualty of the ideological war waged by that most unfortunately unforgettable of German messianic aspirants — Adolf Hitler.

In a move described as an effort to prevent “cultural and linguistic chaos,” China’s State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television has banned puns and other forms of “misleading” wordplay. Critics of this decision say the government is just trying to crack down on jokes about poor leadership.

Although he’s not a fan of the term, Dan Harris cites the practice of purposeful pauses as a superpower of sorts that can help restore one’s inner calm.

Anxiety is not productive. The communications industry suffers from an existential crisis wrought by technological change. Standards have been upended, and the digital world — a universe of bits and […]