I was laughing myself silly over the Mitt Romney’s “Whole Binders Full of Women” comment last night in the presidential debate—and it’s a strange world where an off the cuff […]
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What’s the Big Idea? The famous “trolley problem” was a psychological experiment developed by Philippa Foot that involved a railway trolley headed toward five people who can’t get out of […]
When composer Van Stiefel realized that he wanted to somehow set the paintings of Andrew Wyeth to music, he searched for the words to marry to his expressions in sound. […]
New businesses in Silicon Valley and Alley have tremendous power over what it will mean to be human in the coming decades. And with great power comes great responsibility. We hear often that the world is changing fast – we talk less about what we’d like it to change into.
This weekend I saw Lincoln, which was a tremendous movie. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a compelling performance as President Abraham Lincoln during the closing days of the Civil War, when he […]
How long does it take to know that you’ve found The One—or someone who you might want to see for a second date? I found the answer to this and […]
Dear Paris Hilton You probably don’t remember me. We met briefly once, years ago. It was when you bought a book on numerology and astrology from a store I worked […]
How much infrastructure and training do children need to use a laptop or a tablet? Do they need, for example, schools and teachers? Do they need to have seen computers […]
Learning guru John Seely Brown is not being even slightly ironic when he says that he’d hire an expert player of World of Warcraft (the massive multiplayer online fantasy videogame) over an MBA from Harvard.
According to The Independent, a recent Yale-Moscow State University study has found “a modest but statistically significant familiality and heritability element to creative writing.” The conclusion was based on an evaluation […]
Today Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel and Behavegoes on sale. The author is NYU Assistant Professor of Marketing Adam Alter. I came […]
Without blaming the victims, Sargent finds a way to speak about the loss of vision on every level.
Despite the seductive fusion of evolutionary principles with modern neuroscience, our search for an ultimate explanation of human behavior is not likely to find solutions any time soon.
According to researchers, older women who have insufficient levels of vitamin D may gain more weight than women with sufficient levels of the vitamin.
A short essay argues that most institutions should immediately institute moratoriums on hiring new faculty and building new facilities, and that universities need to focus on clarifying their value proposition in a world of ‘commodity [higher] education.’
Summary: A personable, good-humored example of the liberal-theist cherry-picking ethic. I recently wrote about the evangelical writer Rachel Held Evans and whether her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, can […]
“What are you thinking?” is a booby-trapped marriage question. I know this, but I can’t always resist its shiny lure. My husband John and I were on a long […]
For the third year running, here’s a very personal, very subjective, “I can’t read everything, so I probably left out something, so mention it in the comments, OK?” list of […]
What will it mean to have a dissenter like Chuck Hagel as an ombudsman at the top at the Defense Department?
“A poem should not mean/ but be,” Archibald MacLeish declared in his poem “Ars Poetica.” We too-often look to the arts to explain life itself as if they function as […]
Nathan Harden writes with his characteristic techno-confidence that most higher education will be online soon enough. That means that most non-elite private colleges and many mediocre public institutions will soon […]
I’ve received dozens of emails since my New York Times op-ed proposing a wealth tax came out on Monday. My goal with the piece was primarily to refocus the inequality […]
Were the 20-year trend in declining circumcision rates to continue, reaching levels currently seen in Europe, Johns Hopkins physicians estimate substantial rises in health care spending.
Security is perhaps the most well-known illusion human beings have contrived. From the cursory seduction of emotional stability to the wrathful manifestation of raging armies, the painful longing for complete […]
Now that the election is over, it’s time for American freethinkers to turn our attention to some unfinished business. And here’s one thing that should be at the top of […]
Over the weekend, I was interviewed by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor from the Freedom from Religion Foundation for their Freethought Radio show. That episode is now available for […]
Dr. Joachim Kohn has devoted his life to research and now it’s paying off. He’s creating new ways to regrow body parts for veterans injured in war.
Part 1 of this essay appeared yesterday. Part 3 (of 3) will appear tomorrow. Where Thomas Hardy seems to me primarily a pessimist, W. B. Yeats is an ironist. A […]
A California company has developed new ‘microfluidics’ technology in which fluid sacs rise up like buttons from a flat touchscreen, then seemingly disappear on a user’s command.
Will Germany follow the course of radical transparency or offshore inter-bank deposits?