“Could you tell a person something like, ‘ignore everyone not wearing glasses,’ to find Waldo more efficiently? Probably not.”
Category: ideas
When Compulsive Punning Is An Actual Brain Disorder
“A few people develop a compulsive urge to crack jokes 24 hours a day, with a medical condition called Witzelsucht. Why does it happen?”
The Internet Of The Dead
“When websites such as the Wayback Machine archive websites for posterity and social media accounts linger on after our deaths, a new digital afterlife has been created, one that we can’t necessarily control.”
What It Feels Like To Read When You’re Dyslexic
“The letters constantly flicker around, and everything seems jumbled. The words seem to make sense at first and then they don’t, and just when you think you’ve figured out the word, it seems to morph into a totally different one.”
Philosophy Isn’t In An Ivory Tower, It’s At The Center Of The Entire Modern World
Responding to a column earlier this year titled “When Philosophy Lost Its Way“, Scott Soames explains how, over the last century, philosophers have established the very bases of present-day computing, psychology, cognitive studies, physics, linguistics, and political science.
Why Do People Instagram Their Meals? Because It Makes Them Taste Better
“In short: Perhaps the only thing more irritating than the act of public food photography is knowing that those walking their $16 plates of eggs Benedict over to a window could be getting more out of their dining experience than you.”
Who Tells Their Story – And Who Gets To Study It?
“Even as enthusiasts have called for more ethnic-studies programs—and the debate rages on over making the identities of black, Asian, Native American, and Latino students the centerpiece of class instruction—notably absent was data linking culturally relevant pedagogy specifically to measurable student gains. This changed this year.”
Everything’s A ‘Con’ Now, Thanks To The Internet
“The far-flung corners of fandom used to thrive mostly online, invisible to those didn’t share the same groupie passions. But recently, more fans have been stepping out of the virtual world and into convention centers—the physical manifestation of an obsessiveness bred by the Internet.”
Cars Destroyed Our Ability To Understand – And Write About – The Land
“Travel was once a way to understand topography, but the modern road network often disengages us from it. Most of the time, all that’s visible from a motorway is fast-moving embankment or a half-mile strip of field.”
Brooks: Our Intellectual Life Is Becoming Fragmented, Atomized
“The forces of individualism that are sweeping through so much of society are also leading to the atomization of intellectual life. The odd thing is that it was easier to come to maturity when there were more well-defined philosophical groups.”