Category: ideas

This summer the French capital saw at least 20 cases of “a serious disorder that causes tourists, especially Japanese tourists, many problems on their trip through the City of Light.” Common symptoms include “acute delusions, hallucinations, dizziness, sweating, and feelings of persecution.”

“Although beards appear repeatedly in religious texts, God never explicitly tells us why they’re so holy.” Yet Islam, some strains of Judaism and Eastern Christianity, the Amish and Mennonite faiths, and especially Sikhism all encourage or require men to grow facial hair. What reasons do they offer?

The psychopaths used more conjunctions such as “because,” “since,” or “so that,” which all imply that a crime was necessary. They also used twice as many words that related to physical needs like food, money or sex. In fact, some described what they had to eat on the day of the crime.

“[It] is a tool (like history and religious studies) for thinking about everything else, and every profession from law and medicine to motorcycle maintenance. It’s also one of the most competitive disciplines … [and is] institutionalized beyond academia in ways that history and literature are not, for example in bioethics programs.”

“Humor is not, as some believe, a coping strategy or an outlet for the frustrations that cannot be expressed in any other way … or at least it is not just that. At its best, it is the self-consciousness of crisis. Without changing anything in ‘objective’ reality, humor permits reality to laugh at itself, and in doing so, to stand outside of itself, to become other to itself.”

“What’s the right way to think about the brain? Like a piece of software stuck in permanent beta, it has its share of bugs, but its plasticity allows for frequent updates. And it somehow enables cognitive feats so remarkable they often go unnoticed. Beginning to understand its own limitations is only one of them.”

Nicholas Negroponte: “All these devices are all about consumption, which is fine, but just surprising. My colleagues and I expected the future of computing to be much more interactive and constructive, with more people writing computer programs.”

When astronomers charted the course of Mira, “what ensued was a cultural earthquake. These variations challenged the idea that the realm of the stars was eternal and unchanging – the received wisdom of the time, underwritten by Aristotle.” Censorship and much Church drama ensued – and changed astronomy forever.

USC urban planning prof Elizabeth Currid-Halkett takes a look at the history of arts districts in light of the NEA’s new funding initiatives. “Using art as a development tool is like working with quicksilver: it’s hard to know which path it might take, and a tough proposition when dealing with taxpayers’ money and foundation grants.”

“Here we all are, seeking uniqueness, looking for those things that neatly express the idiosyncrasy of our peculiar personalities. And yet, our uniqueness (at least as consumers) is mostly a sham. Somehow, we all end up in the same place, chasing the same trends while drinking the same drink while staring at the same app on the same phone.”