Category: ideas

Michael Pollan writes about the new – and controversial – study of plant neurobiology. (Does this mean I should feel guilty about pruning?)

“Its ambition is to be a marvel of modern architecture. … But there’s a problem.”

“We’re being a little bit provocative, we’re looking at art historical moments through the lens of MOCAtv, where we celebrate people who’ve been associated with comedic values but are still artists.”

“Social psychologists know that what people say and what they do have little empirical connection. Dating sites capture what we do, and play it back for us. They expose who we are, who we want, and, of course, who we don’t want.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? Parents lie to their kids about a mysterious, bearded gift-giver, only to set them up for inevitable heartbreak. Except, it’s not so simple.”

Linguist Arika Okrent explains what “round yon Virgin” is about and why we “troll the ancient Yuletide carol”.

You’ve probably heard the hypothesis before (or even thought of it yourself), but this find is one of the first to take the idea beyond speculation.

“A new generation of businesses has popped up around China and elsewhere in Asia in which players must escape by solving riddles and brain teasers.”

Derek Thompson: “Rankings create order where there is chaos. They enumerate the innumerable variety of the world and give us a small sense of mastery over our environment. … They’re also devious in both obvious ways (they can be wrong, and not everything is rank-able) and surprising ways that researchers are only beginning to understand.”

“The story goes like this: Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish writer and philosopher, called economics ‘the dismal science’ in reference to Thomas Malthus, that lugubrious economist who claimed humanity was trapped in a world where population growth would always strain natural resources and bring widespread misery.” Turns out that what Carlyle was saying was far more dismal (not to mention abhorrent).