Category: ideas

“Girls and women in their teens and 20s deserve credit for pioneering vocal trends and popular slang, [linguists] say, adding that young women use these embellishments in much more sophisticated ways than people tend to realize.”

“Focus on your current state of consciousness – your experience of seeing, hearing, feeling, thinking, willing, and so on – and ask yourself what kind of being this consciousness is, what its function might be, how it is related to the activity of cells in your brain, what could have brought it about in the course of evolution. Allow yourself to feel the attendant puzzlement, the sense of bafflement: now you are doing philosophy of mind.”

The Human Brain Project is “an effort to build a supercomputer simulation that integrates everything known about the human brain, from the structures of ion channels in neural cell membranes up to mechanisms behind conscious decision-making.”

Clemson philosopher Todd May considers the 1993 film starring Bill Murray in the light of Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return.

“For social scientists, the National Basketball Association isn’t simply a source of pulse-pounding excitement, it’s a laboratory that yields insights into human behavior,” even in the arts. (Check out the one on unconscious racial bias, for instance – that’s a pretty powerful study.)

“Although we’re only starting to grasp how catchphrases shape how people think, it’s possible to begin prescribing some novel suggestions to enhance creativity. For instance, if we’re performing a job that requires some ‘outside the box’ thinking, we may have to avoid working in cubicles.”

A new study claims that “life evolved inside cooled inland ponds formed from condensation from volcanic activity deep inside the Earth. Life later would have spread into the oceans.”

“According to a newly published study, preparing a common meal in reverse order may stimulate innovative thinking.”

“Thanks to technology, trustworthy banking (well, mostly), and our insatiable appetite for convenience, we’re all carrying less and less cash, and soon we’ll probably quit it altogether.”

“In many ways, the progression of 3-D printing from giant warehouses to living rooms has happened faster than anyone had a right to expect. 2-D printing was the exclusive province of industrial presses and foundries for centuries. Computers were refrigerator-size beasts for decades before the Commodore PET and the Apple II. And yet 3-D printers have gone from lab to living room in less than 20 years–and at prices that are already coming within reach of the upper-middle class.”