Category: ideas

“The organisers of the London Olympics are planning to pass on more than just the Olympic flag to the next host city when the games end in September 2012. Senior officials have opened talks with Chicago, one of the early favourites to host the 2016 games, which could result in the bulk of London’s main stadium being dismantled, boxed-up and shipped across the Atlantic to be rebuilt.”

“How do animals manage their feats of engineering, and what does it tell us about their minds?”

“Online gathering spots represent a potentially radical change to historical research, a craft that has changed little for decades, if not centuries. By aggregating the grass-roots knowledge and recollections of hundreds, even thousands of people, “crowdsourcing,” as it’s increasingly called, may transform a discipline that has long been defined and limited by the labors of a single historian toiling in the dusty archives.”

Musical hallucinosis is a mysterious condition that usually strikes elderly people with poor hearing. Auditory hallucinations, in particular hearing voices, are one of the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia. It is, however, the nature of the hallucinations and the patient’s understanding of them that point to the underlying problem.”

“Prince Albert II, who took over from his father in 2005, is staking his name on a daring project to expand Monaco’s less than one square mile of territory by building a new district out to sea. Like Dubai’s artificial islands, it will be a world landmark, designed to boost the economy by attracting new residents, business and luxury tourists.”

“The notion that 630,000 Ameri­cans–a number roughly equal to the population of North Dakota–are making something approaching a living wage selling on eBay is a little rich. I’ve been paid a few times to play the piano–it doesn’t make me a professional musician.”

“Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful.”

“This overemphasis on drugs has become a knee-jerk reaction that’s thrown our whole concept of happiness out of whack. Happiness is now seen as a lack of suffering as opposed to accomplishing important societal goals, like creating art. Ordinary melancholy — a term that dates back to the ancient Greeks — is a natural part of life. It may not be pleasant, but it can be beneficial, because it causes an emotional state of unrest that acts as a spark plug to creative thought.”

“The researchers polled a random sample of nearly 2000 high-school science teachers across the US in 2007. Of the 939 who responded, 2% said they did not cover evolution at all, with the majority spending between 3 and 10 classroom hours on the subject. However, a quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design.”