The idea of Big Brother government snooping on us, listening in on our phone calls, intercepting our e mails, watching us with all kinds of surveillance devices, offends most […]
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Last week, David Leonhardt of The New York Times offered his latest take on why poor but smart kids have trouble getting into top colleges. In the past, he wrote […]
Recent research on what motivates friendship in human and animals societies has challenged theories of evolutionary biology which suggest reciprocal bonds are formed simply to survive.
Since the Victorian invention of the modern, romantic concept of childhood, images of the innocent child have dominated Anglo-American culture and its art. Even nude images of young children that […]
A few weeks ago, when I published an article on vegetarianism as a political tool, I received emails and comments from people in India contesting the opening graphs, which were […]
Many conservatives are sympathetic to one argument against the Defense of Marriage Act: It’s a violation of the principle of federalism.
Last week taught us some important lessons about fear. One is that fear is neither good nor bad. What matters is how we let fear affect us. It spurred racism […]
According to Celebrity Apprentice star Penn Jillette, Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow could double as a producer’s handbook for reality television.
The author of a study that examined recruiter behavior at elite firms says many choose potential employees in the same way they’d choose friends or even romantic partners.
Nothing is a physical concept, because it’s the absence of something. “What we’ve learned over the last hundred years,” Lawrence Krauss says, “is that nothing is much more complicated than we would’ve imagined otherwise.”
“How to Make the Most of Your College Education” has become a popular blogging theme. Megan McArdle got things started this time, but the most sensible contribution has come from […]
Over the past couple of years, my thinking has been greatly influenced by the “Prophets of Progress”—people like Stephen Pinker, Matt Ridley, Stephen Johnson, Hans Rosling, and Peter Diamandis to […]
The impending catastrophe has been fueled by a skewed, institutionally enclosed rationality that is widespread within the business community; the basic principle is that short-term power and wealth are more important than human survival.
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 […]
If art is designed to provoke the passions, it does not confine itself to the pleasant ones.
Imagine if nude women in fashion magazines, action movies, and music videos, suddenly screamed out against political corruption, debilitating income inequality, or oppression by religious leaders. Femen, a group of […]
The Short Answer Fairy needs to visit President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney before the next debate. For awhile there last night, I wondered if President Obama […]
So one reason for LIBERAL EDUCATION is to give students some sense of the genealogy of our ideas. It seems as if everyone believes in free persons these days. Not […]
A fascinating study that is monumental in its research scope and ambitions is published in the fall American Political Science Review, the flagship scholarly journal for the discipline. Researchers S. […]
Last month, I posed a list of questions to people who identify as pro-life. In the long comment thread which ensued, there were a fair number of people who stepped […]
So says an outstanding young conservative public intellectual—Helen Rittelmeyer. It’s true enough that conservatives still do accuse the Democrats—or, more precisely, the liberals—of being moral relativists. Rittelmeyer quotes Paul Ryan […]
On a warm spring night in Paris, May 29, 1913, a riot broke out in the Champs Elysee Theatre during the premier of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring.” As […]
The freewheeling, rabble-rousing Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous thus far has played little or no role in determining the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election. With the exception of partnering […]
This is my second installment in a series on excellent TV shows and the 2012 election. I’m skipping over Girls for now and turning to the HBO series Big Love. […]
I wrote a short post on why freedom of expression must and should always trump dignity. Ideas can remain, locked in place as true or good, even if they are […]
Human behavior is controlled by a lot of neural wiring and chemistry, and an incredible range of cognitive shortcuts and instincts, over which we have practically no conscious control. A […]
People who think a risk will actually affect them and their families and communities, as opposed to somebody else, worry about that risk more. People who think a risk is […]
A new study regarding a high-profile risk…mercury…has two important findings; there may be an association between in-utero mercury exposure and ADHD as kids grow up, but the children of […]
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.” […]
If we accept Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s claim that remaining in power is the primary motivation of our leaders, then the political structure of a nation is the single most important determinant of how responsive its leaders will be to its people’s needs.