Category: ideas

“On December 5th, 1846, in the first issue of a newspaper called Di Anglo-Sacsun, an introductory letter to readers heralded the day when ‘bad spelling, the monster that scares, and grins at, and harasses the people, will fall into fits, like the Giant Despair of Doubting Castle, and will die outright of his spasms.'”

“On average, women tend to use their laughter to lure in potential mates, while men use their jokes to attract as many women as they can. …”

“No one is turning over a chicken – so why do we call it flipping the bird? ”

“If artificial intelligence can be achieved it would be an event of unparalleled consequence – perhaps even a rupture in the fabric of history. A bit of long-range forethought might be a moral obligation to our own species.”

“For centuries, human hereditary improvement was a problem in social, not biological, engineering: how to persuade or coerce people into marrying to benefit the population as a whole. The obvious analogy was to agriculture and animal husbandry.”

“The researchers analyzed MRI scans of 218 humans and 206 chimpanzees, with an eye on brain size and organization—the latter of which they assessed by noting for each brain the location of 16 landmark anatomical structures that humans and chimps share. Because the researchers knew the respective biological relationships of both the chimps and the humans in the study, they were able to estimate the heritability—in other words, how much of a role genetics had to play—for both traits.”

“The best have both talent and fanatical practice habits. But if one student is lazier, talent can’t compensate — the one who practices more comes out ahead.”

“Can it cause a chemical change in our body? Can it affect our perception of reality? Can it serve as a stimulant, a hallucinogenic, a depressant, or anything that mimics these effects? We spoke to a neuroesthetics expert, an art critic and a neuroscientist to find out.”

“Treescrapers have emerged as a popular typology in speculative architecture, a building scheme that pledges environmental gains and density—but exists mostly on paper. The porosity of these designs upends conventional standards for construction. They look futuristic, maybe so much so that they don’t look like the future of architecture.”

“Psychologically speaking, creative personality types are difficult to pin down, largely because they’re complex, paradoxical and tend to avoid habit or routine. And it’s not just a stereotype of the ‘tortured artist’ — artists really may be more complicated people. Research has suggested that creativity involves the coming together of a multitude of traits, behaviors and social influences in a single person.”