Category: ideas

“Fifteen scientists and science popularisers turned up [at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park] on Monday to help invent a new form of science communication. This was the kind of public exposure that would make even an experienced stand-up comedian anxious, so wisely they all came armed with props, from a giant plastic ladybird to a blow-up globe.”

“Yes, a wired future might look good for democracy if some of the social functions currently performed by traditional media are taken up by new Internet projects. But that outcome needs to be demonstrated–perhaps constructively aimed at–rather than assumed. For populists such as Clay Shirky, the need for considered political commitment does not even merit discussion. The triathlon must go on, even if the athletes become brainwashed and bigoted.”

“Psychologists and economists have looked in some detail at vacations — what we want from them and what we actually get out of them. They have advice about what really matters, and it’s not necessarily what we would expect.”

“As the Internet grows more and more important to modern life, some are now asking a different kind of question: Should broadband access be a civil right?”

“Teams of computer scientists, graphics visionaries, artificial-intelligence wizards, social-science experts, digital game makers and Hollywood storytellers “are taking the notion of virtual reality to a new level of fidelity, creating immersive environments that, among other things, help America’s soldiers experience the culture of Iraq and Afghanistan before they go and treat them for post-traumatic stress when they return.”

“Visiting the Paris Exhibition in 1900, the American writer Henry Adams saw something so remarkable he compared its influence to that of the Virgin Mary. It was a hall filled with machines – early power generators known as dynamos.” Today we hardly ever experience that sort of wonder; we’re more prone to “machine-made helplessness.”

“‘Am I awake or am I dreaming?’ I ask myself for probably the hundredth time. I am fully awake, just like all the other times I asked, and to be honest I am beginning to feel a bit silly. All week I have been performing this ‘reality check’ in the hope that it will become so ingrained in my mind that I will start asking it in my dreams too.”

“Many people might think it’s odd to have an institute doing research in the fields of love, goodness, and how these can lead to a happier life. So tell us a bit about the kinds of studies you have supported.” A Q&A with the Institute’s director, Dr. Stephen Post.

“What has gripped everyone’s attention is the exorbitant character of the anger Tea Party members express. Where do such anger and such passionate attachment to wildly fantastic beliefs come from?” J.M. Bernstein suggests that the rage, and the consequent willingness to believe things that aren’t true, arise from the place where the American myth of rugged self-sufficiency meets the shock and fury of a lover suddenly rejected.

The 1964 edition of The Joy of Cooking described leg of lamb as being “well-done” at 160 to 165 degrees; the book’s 1997 edition describes the same meat at about 140 degrees as “medium.” By 1990, Craig Claiborne’s NY Times Cookbook didn’t even suggest well-done leg of lamb as an option. Susan Burton investigates how this change happened.