Category: ideas

“So what do you do when you have the fever and work in a field more or less unrelated to your love for Friedrich Nietzsche and Emily Dickinson? Naturally, you spend your off hours reading books and talking about them with others who share the fever. There are legions of us, and in truth I’m one of the more dilettantish members of the tribe.”

Hmmmm. “Sometimes a story can sit completed for hours — or, like in this case, weeks — just waiting for that official word. It’s crucial for us to remember that when a story is published by The Times it becomes part of the historical record, so giving in to the knee-jerk impulse to go for the clicks or be part of the conversation is unwise.”

Rockefeller University neuroendocrinologist Bruce McEwen gives a rundown of the mechanisms and the (worrisome) effects.

Oh, yes, it definitely happens – far more often to young children, but to some adults as well. (Hey, it takes away the dread, at least temporarily.) It’s all about glucose in the brain.

I bring up the extent to which “Dumb” is the Great American Default, because we are in the midst of an era in which the notion that the elite and elitism are the source of every problem has become fashionable. And, let’s be honest, when Americans say “elite,” they don’t mean rich people. They mean smart people.

“At a time when distrust in journalistic institutions is swelling, technology that further muddies the ability to discern what’s real is rapidly advancing. Convincing Photoshop-esque techniques for video have arrived, and the result is simultaneously terrifying and remarkable.”

For many cognitive scientists these days, “the idea that there is a substantive self is passé. When cognitive scientists aim to provide an empirical account of the self, it is simply an account of our sense of self – why it is that we think we have a self. What we don’t find is an account of a self with independent powers, responsible for directing attention and resolving conflicts of will. … So what is a substantive self?” Philosopher/cognitive scientist Carolyn Dicey Jennings offers an answer.

Seriously. Just click on the link and keep going. (It’s not finished yet but will be within a few days, which is likely about how long it will take you to deal with this piece anyway.) As a Gizmodo explainer said, “It’s a deep thought experiment into what we consider humanly possible.”

Basically, design the cities so that it’s OK for many areas to get wet. “The challenge is to create city spaces that ‘prepare for routine-but-inconsistent flooding. … We know it’s going to happen, but it’s unpredictable. Planners don’t like that idea. It freaks us out.'”

Laureline, the badass heroine of a 50-year-old French bande dessinée, has her roots partly in feminist texts including Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. “She was, from the start, a radically impressive figure who set the bar high for women in science fiction. No mere beautiful figure, Laureline has a piercing intellect, a near-indomitable pride in herself, an endearing but acid wit, and formidable fighting skills. And yet she resists being an archetype of female perfection.”