Category: ideas

“Admittedly, that sounds like an oxymoron; creative thinking and conformity are usually considered mutually exclusive. But newly published research finds a specific sort of arm twisting can help people who aren’t terribly innovative increase their creative output. The key is pressuring them to think independently, within the confines of a group project.”

“Wars of the future might be decided through manipulation of people’s minds, concludes a report this week from the UK’s Royal Society. It warns that the potential military applications of neuroscience breakthroughs need to be regulated more closely.”

“An 83-year-old Belgian woman is able to chew, speak and breathe normally again after a machine printed her a new jawbone. Made from a fine titanium powder sculpted by a precision laser beam, her replacement jaw has proven as functional as her own used to be before a potent infection, called osteomyelitis, all but destroyed it.”

“I’m interested intellectually and culturally about how the imaged world is being knit together by technologies such as Photosynth. More or less public images on Flickr, they’re all being knit together in this giant quilt. Any place you look has been photographed. Anything you want to see, from the street, from the air, by satellite photo.”

“Thankfully, the study showed we’re all not slaves to vice and distraction, as the need for sleep and leisure topped the list. However, next on the list of ‘self-control failure rates’ was checking in with social media, email and work — ahead of the urge to have a Camel Light, while sipping on that glass of 12-year single malt scotch.”

“He was an eloquent proponent of a secular, democratic society, and was the strongest advocate for freedom and tolerance in the early modern period.”

Diane Ackerman: “More than 150 million people a year visit zoos and aquariums in the United States. Why do we flock to them? It’s not just a pleasant outing with family or friends, or to introduce children (whose lives are a cavalcade of animal images) to real animals, though those are still big reasons. I think people are also drawn to a special stripe of innocence they hope to find there.”

Garry Gutting argues that “we have never gotten over the French Revolution. The revolution introduced the basic liberal idea that government must be fundamentally democratic … We all, in principle, share in the power to govern ourselves. But this idea led (or, at least, was feared to lead) to a much more radical one: that everyone should have an equal share in power.”

“A 2008 law requires Brazilian teenagers to study philosophy because it is ‘necessary for the exercise of citizenship’.” Carlos Fraenkel pays a visit to a class in Salvador.

“Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.”