Category: ideas

“The Memoto camera can be clipped to your clothing or worn on a chain around your neck. There is no shutter release, no display and no on-off button. The camera simply takes a picture automatically every 30 seconds, which comes to 120 pictures an hour or 2,880 a day.”

“When people anywhere on the political spectrum hold extreme policy opinions, merely asking them to explain how the policies work leads them to moderate their views. That, at least, is the finding of [an] interesting new study, which finds that extremism is fueled by a lack of understanding, or perhaps a failure to think through just how things work in the real world.”

The Term has become “an all-purpose technology industry buzzword, drained of meaning. A “synergy” for our time. This is a shame, because while all innovation is great, the idea of disruptive innovation as a distinctive kind of innovation has real value.”

How the German philosopher and the Argentine author anticipated the long, strange road down which Werner Heisenberg would lead physical science.

“Time, of course, seems real to us. We live in and through time. But to physicists, time’s fundamental reality is an illusion.”

“There are topics people discuss on Facebook, based on their gender and age, like movies or politics. Men are more interested in politics, and the amount men talk about politics increases with age. Women seem to be less interested in writing about travel, compared to men, the older they get. And people talk about the weather more and more as they get older.”

“Modern-day scientists have now developed a far more compelling argument for the genetic and neurological components of criminal behavior. They have uncovered, quite literally, the anatomy of violence.”

“There’s a great deal of psychological evidence showing that people find cell phone conversations particularly more annoying than general conversations or ambient noise … because our brains expend a lot of energy trying to guess what words will come next.”

It had to happen sooner or later. “Porn Studies, to be published by Routledge starting in 2014, is described as ‘the first dedicated, international, peer-reviewed journal to critically explore those cultural products and services designated as pornographic and their cultural, economic, historical, institutional, legal and social contexts.”

“A screen above [our] heads displayed the words ‘Live Better, Help Often, Wonder More.’ And then, our high priest arrived … [in] a patterned tie and pink skinny jeans. As he stood before his beaming congregation, the band struck up a tune: ‘Wild World,’ by Cat Stevens. Jones danced along for a while, gangly beneath the yellow lights. When the song ended, he welcomed us to the Sunday Assembly’s ‘Easter for Atheists’ service.”