Category: ideas

“With fiery breath, razor-sharp claws, scales as hard as shields and a vast underground lair, … where did the idea for such a bizarre beast – with such an odd mixture of traits – come from in the first place?” Probably not from dinosaur fossils, for starters. (Merlin, the wizard of the King Arthur stories, does seem to have a role, though.)

“Research suggests that, in terms of our attitudes towards issues, we are no more polarized than we were decades ago. But our emotions, and the behaviors they drive, have largely uncoupled from our actual analysis of the issues.”

Simon Winchester: “When you see beneath the muscle and the skin something so beautiful, so finely constructed, you can understand the fascination that someone like Dudley has. It may sound rather corny, but it gives you a new reverence for life.”

Though frankly, Henri the (existential crisis) cat is funnier than Jean-Paul.

Jobs loved digital things that looked like things in the physical world – but the designers now in charge at Apple definitely don’t. How will we react to losing our faux leather stitching in iCal?

When did the future begin? Maybe the 1920s, when a Czech play introduced the word “robot,” and IBM invented the first mechanized punch card.

“Conferences and corporate speaking gigs have helped replace the ­journalist-as-translator with the journalist-as-sage; in a magazine profile, the scientist stands out, but in a TED talk, the speaker does.”

“[Can] science answer a question like, ‘What is the purpose of a mountain?’ According to [Richard] Dawkins, this is a silly question that doesn’t deserve an answer. But not everyone finds questions about the purpose of mountains so silly.”

In a Lexicon Valley podcast, Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield look at some of the mines in this particular minefield – from Khrushchev’s notorious line “We will bury you” to Iranian protestors to the old stereotype that Jews have horns sprouting from their heads.

“[Recent] research finds that a statement in the presence of images or other additional information enhances people’s feelings of truthiness, even when they don’t provide any evidence the statement is true.”