Category: ideas

In the United States, five major events marked religion’s “horrible decade” from 2000 to 2010. Is this religious recession over – or has the real decline only just begun?

“No particular era now dominates. We live in a post-era era without forms of its own powerful enough to brand the times. The zeitgeist of 2012 is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist. I can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence, but it’s true; there is something psychically sparse about the present era, and artists of all stripes are responding with fresh strategies.”

“Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.”

“I’m going to show you two kinds of nothing. The first is a small patch of space, way, way out in the universe, remote from everything, with nothing in it, no stars, no planets, no bits of dust, no debris, no atoms, not even one. It’s as empty as empty can be. And next, I’m going to show you a painting. Except it isn’t a painting, it’s a canvas, on which you see…absolutely nothing. No marks, no paint, no human gesture. It, too, is totally empty. It was made by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg.”

“Gore talked of a ‘Wiki-democracy’ of ‘digital flash mobs calling out the truth’ and ‘a government square that holds people accountable.'”

“The shift to a world where virtual experiences are common – and almost as intense and meaningful as real ones – presents powerful psychological opportunities.” Says the head of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory, “We think virtual reality is a way to change very entrenched behaviour.”

“A study conducted by the food company Unilever and the University of Manchester wanted to find out whether background sounds affect the perception of flavor. They found that people rated foods less salty and less sweet as noise levels increased. When noise levels decreased, the perception of those tastes increased.”

“Compared with other animals, humans have a very unusual pattern to our lives. We take a very long time to grow up, we are long-lived, and most of us stop reproducing halfway through our lifespan.” Middle age “adds two healthy decades after the babies stop appearing – two decades which most other animals simply do not get.”

“Humans have created cultures that bring out the best of our species in terms of innovation, self-sacrifice and co-operation but at the same time can produce horrors which include parental murders that are excused by neighbours and friends. If we want to explain our social behaviour in scientific terms, we must not only highlight the advantages of close co-operation with others, but also account for the perverse actions that can emerge simultaneously.”

“Unlimited vacation fosters productivity and loyalty because it favors results over input.” Turns out that when people have that much choice, they choose to work ridiculously hard – so hard that they have to be forced to take vacation.