One day, I found a press release from an academic journal, calling attention to one of its articles. That is unusual enough, since the kinds of articles that Aaron Swartz–a […]
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In honor of Earth Day, I wanted to share an article written by my former colleague Ross Robertson for EnlightenNext magazine called “A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21stCentury.” […]
Why can we face up to our inconsistencies in the past but not expect more in the future?
There’s a moment in Keith Richards’ recent memoir when he pauses his tale of addiction and debauchery to reflect that, once a certain number of stories about his excesses had been told […]
My electric toothbrush kept me up half the night like a squalling newborn. The trouble began yesterday. My husband and I were sitting downstairs when we heard a thunderous rumbling […]
My electric toothbrush kept me up half the night like a squalling newborn. The trouble began yesterday. My husband and I were sitting downstairs when we heard a thunderous rumbling […]
Recall Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), America’s “archprude” and upholder of Victorian morality. Comstock devoted his life to denouncing art he deemed “obscene, lewd or indecent.” In response to a New York […]
This was originally published on the Scientific American guest blog on February 5th How much does environment influence intelligence? Several years ago University of Virginia Professor Eric Turkheimer demonstrated that […]
As architects understand more about the brain, they may be able to design space that facilitates learning and growth, perhaps even space that helps treat neurological diseases.
One consequence of mass killings like this week’s horror in Newtown, according to reporting by Kristina Fiore, is this: Involuntary commitments of mentally ill men will increase for a while. […]
While the desire to tax churches is not new, it seems as far from reality as possible at this moment. As has been commented, no atheist could possibly hope to […]
Should employees be incentivized to deliver high performance on day-to-day tasks? Of course we need that, but 20-30 percent of incentives should be based on “breakthrough new pathways for the company, experiments,” says entrepreneur Jack Hidary.
The tablet revolution, by making it possible to place advertisements within digital e-books, is about to change the publishing world forever. Imagine commuting to work while reading The Great Gatsby on your […]
If we know that we are bad at predicting and can account for the underlying psychology then why do we continue to make bad predictions?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau might say that Congress has become more and more unpopular as Americans have begun to appreciate its basic illegitimacy as a law-making institution.
To answer my own headline, not likely. The National Rifle Association seems to lead an “Even I Can’t Kill Me” charmed existence as the most powerful lobby in DC, and […]
Data-mongering is how Americans try to explain or control someone’s actions. And yet, statistics about people in general, or about some category of people, tell you nothing certain about any one individual.
When your hollow bullet causes a prairie dog to explode on impact, that’s called a tap. The real prize, however, is a double tap. That’s when your single bullet kills […]
BIG THINKER Steven Mazie does well to criticize the complacency of Stephen Asma. Asma, citing obvious facts of evolutionary psychology, observes that our natural powers of knowing and loving are limited. […]
“The owl of Minerva,” Hegel wrote, “takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.” A year ago I launched Praxis as a forum for thinking reflectively about […]
In our current “War on Terror,” it’s sometimes hard to imagine or appreciate the terrors of times gone by. For Americans of the 19th century, stories of shipwrecks struck deep […]
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.
The past four human generations have seen their lifespans extended more than the preceding 8,000 generations, but what are the implications of living so much longer?
Well, you can’t miss the new film Lincoln. Here’s the big reason: Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln is pretty much WHO we will think of when imagining the person “Father Abraham” from now […]
There are a lot of nightmare scenarios when it comes to the Middle East. Some of these are already visible on the horizon as the New York Times outlines in […]
How do we understand the rate of technological change and how can we develop the tools to best adapt to this change?
All throughout this year, I’ve been hearing people excitedly claiming that December 21, 2012, one week from today, will be the date of some major world event. Amusingly, the many […]
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 […]
Five hundred years ago today, Michelangelo unveiled The Sistine Chapel Ceiling to Pope Julius II. The next day, All Saints’ Day 1512, the Pope inaugurated the newly decorated chapel with […]
In September of 1965, Life magazine ran a piece on medicine’s “astonishing” and “audacious experiments” that might even promise a “kind of immortality.” The first article dealt with reproduction. The […]