Category: ideas

Evolution, he claimed, was taking us toward what he called the Noosphere (“nous” is greek for mind) – a global unity of consciousness, a ” ‘thinking’ sphere circling the Earth above the biosphere, which [would comprise all] human reflection, conscious souls, and love.” But “a funny thing happened on the way to the New Age. Humanity ended up building an actual Noosphere (or at least its first draft). It was called the Internet.”

“The idea that worriers are cannier than average may just seem to make sense—a worried mind is a searching mind, and smarter people may have the cognitive agility to examine multiple angles of any situation, for better or worse.”

Artificially activating “cortical oscillations in the alpha frequency band”—a type of brain wave that has previously been linked with creativity—leads to higher scores on a standard test measuring innovative thinking, according to researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that biological explanations are stigmatizing, possibly because people tend to see such problems as less treatable.”

A team of Montreal researchers “identified the personality traits of those with a ‘psychological readiness to suffer and sacrifice’ his or her life for a cause. The result, a Self-Sacrifice scale, could be a boon to anti-terror operatives across the globe.”

“Commentator Tania Lombrozo says the answer to whether scientific and religious explanations are fundamentally at odds isn’t a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when it comes to explaining the world around us.”

“Now, teachers function more as coaches than lecturers and the students are active collaborators. Initially limited to the high school, the framework is now being phased in at the middle school, too. And while the extended-learning program, now five years old, predates the student-centered initiative, officials say it has been key to the turnaround.”

“This is the closest thing we have to a law of portable gadgetry: the more annoying it is to the people around you, the ‘better’ the concept. The more that using it makes you seem like an asshole to people who aren’t using it, the brighter its commercial prospects.”

“Walk along the river towards the heart of Skopje, the Republic of Macedonia’s capital, and you’ll quickly find yourself among a host of gleaming, neo-classical buildings, complete with ornate columns and rooftop figures of nymphs. The buildings weren’t there five years ago.”