Category: ideas

“[It’s] one of the interesting paradoxes of our times that [the former Mrs. Tiger Woods] can be referred to in all apparent earnestness as ‘fiercely private’ while also publicizing her private pain in a mass-circulation periodical.” Do famous people have a special weakness for those who will kiss and tell?

“But amid the raging arguments between believers and sceptics, one possibility has been almost ignored – the idea that the universe around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today. As with much else in modern physics, the idea involves particle acceleration.”

“Decay in the belief in self is driven not by technology, but by the culture of technologists, especially the recent designs of antihuman software like Facebook, which almost everyone is suddenly living their lives through. Such designs suggest that information is a free-standing substance, independent of human experience or perspective. As a result, the role of each human shifts from being a ‘special’ entity to being a component of an emerging global computer.”

“The interplay of exercise and music is fascinating and not fully understood, perhaps in part because, as a science, it edges into multiple disciplines, from physiology to biomechanics to neurology. No one doubts that people respond to music during exercise. Just look at the legions of iPod-toting exercisers on running paths and in gyms.”

“Although we may not give it much thought, our ability to perceive our world visually is no mean feat; the most sophisticated robots in the world cannot yet match it…Somehow, almost magically, we derive a meaningful interpretation of complex scenes very rapidly. How we do this is the million-dollar question in vision research.”

“Could Plato, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., possibly have anything to say about today’s electronic media? As it turns out, yes, It is characteristic of philosophy that even its most abstruse and apparently irrelevant ideas, suitably interpreted, can sometimes acquire an unexpected immediacy.”

“In the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.”

“Scapegoats help the rest of us out by taking hits for the group; … they allow the community to ritually purify itself, offloading its guilt and other toxins onto designated candidates. … Let me be clear: Scapegoats don’t have to be innocent victims. … In fact, criminals have always made excellent scapegoats.”

“Christians believe that God took on human flesh in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind. He did not come to save the chimpanzees or the dolphins … And he certainly did not come to Earth to save the proverbial little green men on the far side of the galaxy.”