In all the splendor of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee, the U.S. might be feeling a little left out. What do we miss out on by not having a queen (or king)?
Category: ideas
How Amazon.com Changed Research (And Then Made Us Into Research)
“Devices and technologies that have become second nature to us – scanners and searchable PDFs, for example – first became familiar to many through Amazon. So did disintermediation: the sudden realization that” – thanks to the Search This Book feature – “we could work our way into a subject without taking a box of file cards to a reference room, riffling through catalogs and consulting librarians.”
The New Yorker Gins Up The Old Prescriptivist-vs.-Descriptivist Language Battle (Again)
“Nature or nurture. Love it or leave it. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If you didn’t already know that euphonious dichotomies are usually phony dichotomies, you need only check out the latest round” in the bogus usage wars – revived beginning last month in the famously fussy magazine (to much bemusement on the language geek blogs).
Only Philosophers Go To Hell
“This is because only someone who understands exactly what she is doing in sinning or rejecting God could deserve such a fate as Hell, and only a philosophical education could provide that kind of understanding. So, it follows, only philosophers can go to Hell.”
Transsexual Toddlers: Can Two-Year-Olds Really Know That They Were Born The Wrong Sex?
A front-page Washington Post story earlier this month focused on Kathryn/Tyler, a preschooler who insisted from age two, “I am a boy.” Was s/he “born this way”? Biologist and gender studies scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling says that things aren’t nearly so simple.
Has Our Concentration On Diversity In The Arts Killed Its Universality?
“From the 1960s and 70s, arts educationalists promoted the idea that not only was everybody capable of responding to art, but that everybody was an artist. Art education moved away from a focus on craft and skill towards a more ‘attitudinal’ understanding of the creative process: expressing one’s unique subjectivity – or later, ethnic identity – was more important than conforming to traditional aesthetic standards.”
What’s Wrong With American Universities
“Most American colleges now allow ‘virtually unlimited freedom’ to undergraduates to choose what they want to study. Very few ‘tell their students what to think’. Most ‘are unwilling even to tell them what’s worth thinking about’.”
The Argumentative Ape: Why Humans Are Wired To Persuade
Impulse thinking, confirmation bias, fuzzy logic – why did humans get such a flawed reasoning apparatus? It may just be that we eveolved not to reason, but to argue and persuade.
Why Almost All Of Us Lie And Cheat A Little Bit – And Why Most Of Us Stop There
“Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people.”
Why Some Of Us Choke At The Big Moment
“In theory, big rewards ought to spur people to great performances, but that often doesn’t happen. A recent study drew on neuroscience to explore why so many people choke.”