Category: ideas

“Though voluntary tax programs could never generate enough money to run a state, more people chip in than you might expect (more, that is, than none). And according to some enthusiasts, we could be doing more to capitalize on this surprising willingness to give.”

“An insubordinate general. A soccer mutiny. … The two events were not, of course, equal in global import. One was a drama on a sports team, the other may alter the course of a war. But both caught the attention of the world as they unfolded. And for all the distinctive political and cultural strands that each separately touched on, they both triggered an immediate and visceral sense that certain widely understood rules of appropriate behavior had been violated.”

“Jumping the turnstiles of the Paris metro, like red wine and croques de monsieur [sic], is a part of the city’s culture. Unlike Cabernet and croques, it’s an offense punishable by a $60 fine. So a band of savvy freeloaders have created an insurance fund for fellow fare dodgers. Fraudsters with foresight can pay about $8 a month into an underground, city-wide scofflaw pool. If they get busted, … they collect the $60 [to pay the fine] and go back to jumping turnstiles. … [So] let’s brainstorm some ways we could import this small-time misdemeanor insurance idea.”

“This worry that the arts could simply roll over and accept science’s superiority has become acute with the total triumph of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, described by the philosopher Daniel Dennett as “the greatest idea anyone has ever had”. Not content with describing the evolution of the human body, evolutionary theory is marching boldly into areas that used to be the preserve of the humanities.”

“Self-actualization,” the noble-sounding top layer of Maslow’s hierarchy, in their model has not only been dethroned, it has been relegated to footnote status. It has been replaced at the top with a more mundane motivation Maslow didn’t even mention: “Parenting.”

“In New York, the most glaring signs of the Great Recession are the stalled construction sites littering the city – boarded up, dusty, and desolate eyesores. The architecture mega-firm Woods Bagot may have a solution, which they’ve just unveiled: Temporary, inflatable buildings that let the developers make money while they wait for their finances to shape up.”

“It is an extremely minor consequence of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid that foreigners have been slow to appreciate the South African national character as a whole. … [It’s] high time that we in the international community develop appropriate derogatory stereotypes of the South African people as a whole, black and white, Boer and Bantu. In the noise of the vuvuzela we may well hear the expression of a few special traits.”

“[P]recisely why faith is linked to higher levels of well-being and lower levels of mortality remains something of a mystery. Newly published research provides an intriguing clue: When they make a mistake, religious people are less likely to get stressed out about it.”

Tony Perrottet gives a brief tour of leases and land sales down the centuries, from the world’s oldest lease (a 4,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablet), through the first professional real estate agents (in ancient Rome, where they were called extractores), to the reason so many American writers and artists could afford to live in 1920s Paris.

“Since the age of the Druids, bees have been a symbol of wisdom. The Greeks and the Celts used the symbolism as well, as did cultures in India and Egypt, Sumerian mythology, and Christianity. … We feed our bees corn syrup, truck them from state to state, throw out their honey, and spray their pollen supply with toxic insecticides and pesticides, and wonder why in the world they might be dying off in catastrophic numbers.”