Why thinking hurts, among other things.
David Rock’s lecture (video) Your Brain at Work is wonderful. No one, not one of us, really wants to think and being asked to do so is experienced as a th...
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
Does politics need to be entertaining? Yes.
Writing about Sarah Palin and more recently enjoying parodies of Glenn Beck I’ve been thinking on and off about political theater. Or rather, how difficul...
Omni. Meaning lots of links and not that magazine with the cool covers from yesteryear. Sadly.
The Browser is my favorite site of the moment. The below excerpts are taken mostly from it. · “I argue that dreaming is not a parallel state but that it ...
A map of the so-called flat world.
A map of the most and least remote places on Earth. (via MeFi)
on scientific knowledge, mental health and politics
A study of male testosterone levels during election night 2008 suggests male supporters of McCain-Palin were “amped up” on testosterone. As technolo...
The NYT on Fox News vs. the White House; a curious claim.
Would love to know what basis the NYT and Brian Shelter have for making the following claim: “But shots are still being fired, which animates the idea tha...
Buy stock in ink jet printing.
On NPR’s Marketplace this morning, a media business expert chimed in on Conde Nast discontinuing the print edition of Gourmet magazine with: “They&#...
The new Americas.
Why the U.S. is and is not at war in Latin America: What has happened in Rio applies, in varying degrees, throughout Latin America–most notably in Mexico, Guate...
The decade ahead.
Admittedly not the best story to read while having trouble sleeping: Finance will be costlier and investment weak, so the stock of physical capital, on which pr...
Is all science fiction religious writing? Er, yeah, probably.
In a meandering discussion on MetaFilter I had occasion to note that, as a genre, science fiction is closely related to religious writing. If science fiction gr...
True story. There’s a bee buzzing inside a light on our deck.
Tonight, as I sat outside, a dying bee flew into a light above me. It buzzed against the hot bulb for a while before falling out and landing on the floor, still...
Water restrictions in LA lead to waterline ruptures?
The NYT: The rash of blowouts began in June, when a new drought-induced water policy went into effect, a circumstance leading outside engineers and analysts to ...
The psychology of poverty, or, things I’d rather read about than experience.
“Poverty makes some people insane,” writes Michael Gold, as quoted in an inspiring review of Depression Era art in a recent issue of The New Yorker....
One side has Fox, the other has YouTube.
Dear Mr. Joss Whedon and your compassionate legions of nerddom: please consider making your next viral hit a musical comedy about the eighth circle of Hell. And...
The privileges of being a political refugee and the son of political dissidents.
The privileges of being a political refugee for me are many. Not least of which is my U.S. citizenship. But the one that I have in mind tonight is more immateri...
On the benefits of a state-run media agency.
Perhaps, one of the benefits of having a state-run media agency – which competes, however unfairly, with private media agencies – is the possibility of accounta...
What will America look like in 30 years? Perhaps, like Canada in three.
Once it gets going, Adam Gopnik’s profile of Canadian Michael Ignatieff’s political philosophy is captivating. Anyone wondering, as I am, what Ameri...
Pie-chart: the racial composition of my friends pool on Facebook.
There are many caveats to the following graph, which is about as scientific a description of my person as my astrological sign. (Cancer.) First, I am a very bad...
Does the ethnic make-up of your friends pool on Facebook reflect your income?
I was looking at the profile of a friend’s friend on Facebook the other day. All of this person’s friends were Latinos – or, at least, had Hispanic ...
animals, continued.
simen johan: paintings and sculptures josh keyes: drawings and paintings cai guo-qiang: sculptures walton ford: paintings