Category: ideas

“As independent citizens equal to men under the law, Egyptian women could own their own property, buy and sell it, keep hold of it despite marriage … They did work in the public sphere alongside men at every level of society, … [and] surviving accounts also reveal they received the same pay as male colleagues for undertaking the same work.”

Red tourism, of course: “The idea is for Chinese people to have fun with their political party, to enjoy themselves in the great amusement park of Communism. They’re invited to feast on braised pork, Mao’s favorite dish, in the leader’s birthplace of Shaoshan.”

“France, once famous for its joie de vivre, is suffering from existential gloom – and the French have only themselves to blame for their malaise … Research by a French academic … suggests that the country’s citizens are “taught” to be miserable by elements of their own culture.”

“It it may well be that the French are only less likely to call themselves happy – and what’s unclear is whether the gloomy or skeptical turns of phrase that they use to describe their states of mind correlate to their actual states of mind. It may be the language of happiness that eludes the French rather than the underlying condition.”

“One reason for X-Phi’s popular success is surely the novelty of contemporary philosophers sullying their hands with data. On top of that, they have a nifty logo, an anthem, a YouTube presence and assorted blogs. But I think there’s a less recognized and deeply ironic reason for X-Phi’s popular success.”

New – and better-designed – research is demonstrating time and again that many animals are both more intelligent and more empathetic than scientists had acknowledged. (Turns out they were testing for the wrong things.)

“I believe we have literally thousands of Steve Jobses,” but we don’t empower them to create. “Look at the way we treat creative people! We just have to detoxify our companies and we’ll have innovation flowing out of the ground like oil.”

“If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so.”