Search Results

Don’t worry. Be happy. Live in the present.  The philosopher Rousseau said that was the natural condition of man, before he was screwed up by self-consciousness, time, awareness of death, […]

Sometimes the toughest shadow to escape is one you cast over yourself. When artist Art Spiegelman began publishing Maus in 1980 in chapter form in the indie comics magazine Raw, […]

On macro and micro levels, longer life is not working out. Almost all nations are aging and will confront the disruptive demographics of an aging society, some sooner than later. […]

Today’s decision warns colleges and universities across the country that they need to be very careful about how they use race in admissions. But the headline is clear: they still may do so.

The tens of thousands of turbines generating power around the world on land and, increasingly, at sea, represent a stunning reversal of fortune for an industry that fifty years ago was virtually non-existent.

Lasting power is accorded to only a handful of presidents, especially after their death. There is no doubt that John Kennedy is one of the few. How did it happen?

Gardiner’s life-long immersion in Bach’s music—as performer and conductor, rather than as academic analyst—qualifies him perhaps better than anyone else alive today to recreate what it was to be the living, breathing, human Bach.

Rampant corruption causes headaches for China’s new leadership “They are notorious for deceiving wherever they can. […] Their frauds are most astutely and craftily performed, so that Europeans have to […]

We are interlinked with everybody and therefore, they are helping us.

So you might think I’m excessively anti-technological.  That’s not true at all.  I do think that liberal education should be a counterweight to all our technological obsessions.  That means its […]

In September I covered a paper that described the massive amount of bias created in the legal system in parts of the US where forensic laboratories are paid in return […]

Hon. Shira A Scheindlin has struck major blow to Michael Bloomberg’s and Ray Kelly’s racist and megalomaniacal “Stop and Frisk” policy. Bloomberg’s and Kelly’s policy acts in direct opposition to both the progress of our culture and of the laws they have sworn to uphold.

There is a moral case for intervening in Syria.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk – recently named by TED’s Chris Anderson as one of the most innovative thinkers in the world today – is at it again, this time with a plan […]

All too often we get plans which have this common assumption that the future’s going to be just like today.

One of the reasons Joseph Campbell’s work in comparative mythology continues to resonate—some, myself included, would argue grow—is due to his ability to synthesize religious and spiritual traditions from around […]

Is abortion the most futile policy debate ever? Sometimes I wish the entire country would enter collective, premature menopause just to end it, already. The anti-abortion initiatives and state laws […]

Extreme weather trends combined with a rapidly growing urban population. What is happening and what can we do about it?

Five guidelines for navigating the Internet from the great 19th-century liberal individualist.

Drifting in the deep, the hulking, yet streamlined mammoth unleashes a string of sound, a booming, but delicate song. 

Here’s what two excellent sociologists have concluded about marriage today: Thanks to falling working-class wages, the outsourcing of American manufacturing, the thinning of company benefits, and the rise of part-time […]

Liberty-minded Americans wonder when and if their countrymen will say, “enough is enough.”

In the early 1850s, Daniel McCallum, the General Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad, had a problem. At the time, the New York and Erie Railway was the […]

      We hear the admonishments all the time; smoking ­­­___ cigarettes a day will take ­­­­­          ___ years off your life, drinking ___ glasses of alcohol a day will take […]

One of the first words nixed by postgraduate education is “truth.” Amidst all the deconstructing and linguistic acrobatics, “truth” is just too troublesome and old fashioned. So, imagine my surprise […]

Adaptability is going to be one of the most critical skills we can have in the future.

That would make it about ten times older than the oldest accepted examples of cartography

Just as religion informed the dawn of civilized man, so too do these 21st century stories act as a shield – protecting our sanity from an overwhelming sensation of entropic change. We are trying to find the signal in the noise. But increasingly, the noise is becoming louder and louder. It’s like this treadmill we’re running on has reached a speed we can’t keep up with. Today’s prowess Kairos is being pushed into yesterday’s fleeting Chronos. It’s a collision of dizzying proportions… everything happens now.

Here is a brilliant column by 11-year old Olympia Nelson on provocative selfie shots on social media. It’s valuable to hear this world described from the vantage point of someone […]

In traditional Sufism, a seeker would find a teacher and study under him for a number of years in a particular order, or turuq. During that time the seeker would […]