Category: ideas

“Since 2003, motorized travel demand has leveled out or even declined in most of the countries studied, and travel in private vehicles has declined,” the authors wrote in their study. “Car ownership has continued to rise, but these cars are being driven less.”

“Necessity may or may not be the mother of invention, but it appears to be a highly effective motivator – even for the best of the best.”

“Just as fear protects us from a lion that would eat us, ‘disgust is quite similar. It keeps us away from tiny little animals that would eat us up from the inside. We evolved to stay away from poo, from bodily fluids, from mucous, from foods that have gone off, from worms in the garden’.”

“New research suggests that the specter of the shrinking sound bite is anything but new. In fact, quotations from politicians have been getting shorter for more than a century.”

“America’s wires are not just a metaphor. Protected pathways, from roads to optical fiber, have been integral to the nation’s political development. Our technological world evolves every day, incrementally — and then, suddenly, in lurches. Is this one of those times?”

“Scientists have found that people with conservative views have brains with larger amygdalas, almond shaped areas in the centre of the brain often associated with anxiety and emotions. On the other hand, they have a smaller anterior cingulate, an area at the front of the brain associated with courage and looking on the bright side of life.”

“The images on screen are not the result of a patchwork of technical tricks, but of precise mathematical equations based on the way the world actually looks and operates — in a word, physics. They use what is known as discrete differential geometry, a field so new that the first textbook on the subject was published only two years ago.”

“At a London conference of boredom enthusiasts called Boring 2010, audience members listened to speeches on paint names and bus routes. Judging from the droopy faces in the audience, the gathering was a hit.”

“To look for explanations behind natural phenomena is, as Einstein remarked, akin to an act of devotion. To admire a flower or a rainbow for their beauty and to then try to understand their function within a wider natural landscape only adds to their beauty. In this sense, there is a religious aspect to science.”

“Even though prognostications turn out to be wrong as often as they are right, why do they have such enduring appeal? What purpose have they served, from ancient times to our information age?” Ten contributors weigh in as part of a NY Times Room for Debate feature.