Category: ideas

Steve Neumann: “I feel I owe a debt to philosophy. It liberated me; it gave me the courage to leave behind the comfort and security of a religious worldview, and provided me with a purpose I will be glad to pursue for the rest of my life. So despite having a demanding day job as a guide dog mobility instructor, I spend much of my free time studying it, working out my own positions and trying to inject it into popular culture so that others can be touched by it the way I was. I’ve become not an academic philosopher, but a sort of hybrid – a philosophy journalist.”

“Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course, but this is not the first paper to have found a link between anxiety and intelligence. On the other hand, Penney and his colleagues also found an interesting association in the other direction: The more respondents said they replayed past events over in their minds, the lower they ranked on non-verbal intelligence.”

“The most famous ceasefire was among British and German regiments around Christmas Eve. German soldiers actually decorated their trenches with Christmas trees and began singing carols. British forces began singing back, and in a matter of hours over 100,000 troops were unofficially crossing into disputed territory to sing, exchange gifts, and celebrate with one another. This all occurred, mind you, during the second bloodiest conflict in European history.”

In a new press release from the American Psychological Association, “psychology professor Tim Kasser gives an interesting perspective from his research on just why placing a high value on stuff is no good. In a recent meta-analysis he published with colleagues from the University of Sussex, he found that materialism seems to undermine some of our deepest human needs.”

“According to the most-recent calculations of Strike Debt, the debt-resistance group I work with, the cost would be relatively modest. The federal loan program is propped up by a motley assortment of subsidies and tax exemptions that amount to tens of billions of dollars.”

“Unfortunately, much of the research shows that all the best gift-giving intentions in the world do not necessarily lead to good gifts. Here’s a brief look at some recently published studies that give us some hints on how to give less-terrible presents this holiday season, or any other time of the year, really.”

“There is tremendous suspicion — at least, in American society — that what makes a text a work of art is nothing more than some ideological prejudice: Eurocentrism, say, or political correctness. A related worry is that any provisional canon — the very notion that certain works call for heightened attention and a special place in the practice of education — is fundamentally anti-democratic or somehow elitist.”

“Project 250’s backers have come up with an ambitious plan and a seductive set of renderings, showing a sleek, 21st-century velodrome that looks like a cross between a spaceship and a tidal wave. Not only do they maintain they can build this high-tech, enclosed arena with zero public dollars, but they also insist they can operate it as a for-profit venture. All they ask is that the city gift them a four-acre sliver of South Philadelphia’s FDR Park.”

“The most effective conceptual writing, as with all conceptual art, alters a thing’s accepted context. Critics would have you think that all this is merely silly, but in the best cases there’s a method to the madness: these artists are doing the very basic, very necessary work of helping us see with new eyes.”