Category: ideas

“Asian-American success is typically taken to ratify the American Dream and to prove that minorities can make it in this country without handouts. Still, an undercurrent of racial panic always accompanies the consideration of Asians.”

“Are you a mover, a perceiver, a stimulator, or an adapter? Modes of thinking can be understood in terms of how the top and bottom – rather than right and left – parts of the brain interact.”

According to a recently published study encompassing 31 languages – from Russian to Spanish to Siwu to Icelandic to Lao – the interjection “huh?” seems to be pronounced roughly the same, and to serve the same purpose, in every tongue.

“When it comes to the future of design and technology, the uncomfortable question we bump into is: do human design instincts even matter anymore?”

“What does human existence mean against 100,000 years of climate change? What does one life mean in the face of species death or the collapse of global civilization? How do we make meaningful choices in the shadow of our inevitable end? These questions have no logical or empirical answers. They are philosophical problems par excellence.”

“The cash-short United States Postal Service, which has failed to win congressional approval to stop delivering mail on Saturdays to save money, has struck a deal with the online retailer Amazon.com to deliver the company’s packages on Sundays.”

“A cornucopia of feminine pulchritude in trompe l’oeil, painted by the fair maidens themselves in the mirror! How doth one join these revels?”

Maybe – and no, it’s not the “maaa” in Mama.

Simon Critchley: “Let me set the scene. It’s hot. It’s really hot. It’s the middle of the Greek summer. Socrates is in Athens where he bumps into an acquaintance called Phaedrus. They say hi. They begin to talk.”