Category: ideas

Copyright “hogs” like JK Rowling are making unprecedented claims for control not only of their work but any other works that might derive from it. Surely this isn’t good for the future of creativity…

“It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.”

As people spend more time communing with their televisions and computers, the impact is not just on their health, researchers say. Less time spent outdoors means less contact with nature and, eventually, less interest in conservation and parks.

Animals communicate very different emotional states by very different vocal sequences. “A computer, which relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning methods, could provide a new tool for automatically analyzing large amounts of data typically recorded during behavioral studies.”

“The inevitable rise in sea level that comes with climate change is going to make it increasingly difficult to control flooding in low-lying Holland. But instead of cursing their fate, architects are designing a new Holland that will float on water, and the Dutch government seems willing to try out the scheme.”

Language evolves in sudden leaps, according to a statistical study of three major language groups. The finding challenges the slow-and-steady model held by many linguists and matches evidence that genetic evolution follows a similar path.

“Foreclosures are the dark side of the American dream. And, just as many works of art depict the joys of homeownership after long striving… others have depicted with equal vigor the pain of losing those homes — and losing them because of fast-talking salesmen who peddled not snake oil, but adjustable-rate mortgages.”

New York is America’s business center, its temple of capitalism. So what better place to open a Museum of American Finance? “And if our city’s status and the currency that backs it are more contested than they once were, that only makes the enterprise more urgently intriguing.”

“People are most likely to become depressed in middle age, according to a worldwide study of happiness. The team of economists leading the work found that we are happiest towards the beginning and end of our lives, leaving us most miserable in middle years between 40 and 50.”

“People don’t pay enough attention to how repugnance affects decisions about what can be bought and sold,” according to a Harvard economist. But “ideas about what is repugnant change all the time. Selling oneself into indentured servitude was once thought permissible, while charging interest on loans was not.”