Lewis Lapham: “For the last several years the word ‘revolution’ has been hanging around backstage on the national television talk-show circuit waiting for somebody, anybody – visionary poet, unemployed automobile worker, late-night comedian – to cue its appearance on camera. … Why then does nobody have any use for it except in the form of the adjective, revolutionary, unveiling a new cell phone app or a new shade of lipstick?”
Category: ideas
Explaining Consciousness With Quantum Physics? Really? (Yeah)
“The mere mention of ‘quantum consciousness’ makes most physicists cringe, as the phrase seems to evoke the vague, insipid musings of a New Age guru. But if a new hypothesis proves to be correct, quantum effects might indeed play some role in human cognition.”
A New Jersey-born Comedian Is London’s New ‘Night Mayor’
London’s nightclubs and music venues have been closing at a massive rate, but some subway lines are now running all night in London. New Night Czar Amy Lamé says she can’t wait to “hit the streets” so that she can help make plans and policy changes for “revelers, nighttime workers, businesses and shareholders”
American Adolescence Is Now Extending Into The 20s, And That’s Good For The Brain
The key words here are “neurobiological capital” and “metaplasticity.”
America Invented Adolescence (And America May Soon See The End Of It)
“In addition to the conventional scope of childhood from birth through to age 12 – a period when children’s dependency was widely taken for granted – Americans moved the goalposts of childhood as a democratic ideal by extending protections to cover the teen years … [and creating] institutions that could guide adolescents during this later period of childhood” – the juvenile court system and the democratic high school.
What Exactly Is Consciousness? Here’s What We Know So Far
“What underlies being conscious specifically, as opposed to just being awake? We know it’s not just the number of neurons involved. The cerebellum (the so-called ‘little brain’ hanging off the back of the cortex) has about four times as many neurons as the rest of the brain, but seems barely involved in maintaining conscious level. It’s not even the overall level of neural activity – your brain is almost as active during dreamless sleep as it is during conscious wakefulness. Rather, consciousness seems to depend on how different parts of the brain speak to each other, in specific ways.”
Study: Male Creativity Is Different From Female Creativity. Here’s How
The results suggest men are more likely to produce radical breakthroughs, but women are more likely to be highly creative in a different but equally important realm. As one writer puts it, “adaptive creativity is incremental in nature and tends to work within existing structures or processes. Adaptive creativity is focused on process improvement or unique strategies to carry out a routine objective.”
A Brief History Of Deep Time
The concept of time on a geological or astronomical scale wasn’t articulated until 1788, and the term “deep time” didn’t appear until two centuries later. Yet now, with planet-altering changes happening within a few generations, we’re in the Anthropocene Era (the era of the human) – an era that began with what’s now called the Great Acceleration.
‘The Most Influential Philosopher In World History Whom You Have Probably Never Heard Of’
“Although Mengzi” – or Mencius, as the Jesuits Latinized his name – “was born long after Confucius died, he is referred to as the ‘Second Sage’ because he shaped the form that Confucianism would take for the next two millennia, not just in China, but also in Korea, Japan and Vietnam.”
Why Are So Many People Scared Of Bugs? They’re Such Tiny Little Things
Yeah, a few of them can actually hurt us, but not so many – and even harmless and useful insects like grasshoppers and dragonflies freak out a lot of folks. Yet there are reasons for this.