Category: ideas

Dutch sailors left messages carved in stone on the beaches of Madagascar – but the British and Portuguese stole the letters left beneath the stones.

“Thinking small is the next logical step in America’s urban renaissance. When cities really started changing 10 or 15 years ago, the economy was booming and the Internet was a newfangled gizmo. Today, cities have less money but more ways to communicate, two conditions perfectly suited to more focused, low-cost planning. Now you can home in on a specific neighborhood (or even just a few blocks), find out what the residents there want or need, cheaply implement it on a trial basis, and make it permanent if it works.”

Biologist E. O. Wilson: “Our bloody nature, it can now be argued in the context of modern biology, is ingrained because group-versus-group competition was a principal driving force that made us what we are. … Any excuse for a real war will do, so long as it is seen as necessary to protect the tribe. The remembrance of past horrors has no effect.”

Science writer John Horgan: “Many chimpanzee communities – and all known communities of bonobos, apes that are just as closely related to humans as chimps – have never been seen engaging in intertroop raids. Even more important, the first solid evidence of lethal group violence among our ancestors dates back not millions, hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, but only 13,000 years.”

“Ever since Olympic basketball gold medalist Sergei Belov’s memorable torch run in 1980 at the Moscow Games where he appeared to run over the heads of athletes into Central Lenin Stadium, lighting the Olympic Cauldron has become one of the most anticipated events of the Opening Ceremonies. We’ve seen the fire lit via bow and flaming arrow (Barcelona, 1992), and from a pool of water (Sydney, 2000). This year … British adventurer Bear Grylls will fly across the River Tyne on a zip line on the last leg of the day.”

“For actors in L.A. who aren’t content to just work in the theater, living in one may soon be an option. The 12 movie theaters – some call them palaces – that line the South Broadway downtown thoroughfare long ago fell into disrepair, but they may be making a comeback” – as combination black-box theatres, commercial spaces, and artist/actor homes.

“In late May, the province of Central Java, Indonesia, passed a law requiring residents to use the regional tongue, Javanese, once a week. The law is symbolic and probably unenforceable … but addresses what a local councillor called ‘a tendency for many Javanese people not to use Javanese in their daily lives’.”

“[The] question rests on a false dilemma. … If we think, however, of addiction as involving both choice and disease, our outlook is likely to become more nuanced. For instance, the progression of many medical diseases is affected by the choices that individuals make. … Linking choice and responsibility is right in many ways, so long as we acknowledge that choice can be constrained in ways other than by force or overt coercion.”