November 2008
80 posts
Nap without guilt →
Take a nap. Interrupting sleep seriously disrupts memory-making, compelling new research suggests. But on the flip side, taking a nap may boost a sophisticated kind of memory that helps us see the big picture and get creative.
Nine out of ten dogmas →
Frank Furedi on the assumptions, agendas and distinctly iffy data behind those ubiquitous words, “research shows”.
If Gamers Ran The World →
They would have been a gamer all their lives. Not someone who once played videogames, trotting out the same anecdote about “playing Asteroids once” in interviews; someone for whom games were another part of their lives, a primary, important medium. Someone who understood games.
And if that was the case, what might they have learned?
Garden of Contentment →
In a toxic era, a Hangzhou restaurant pursues purity.
How Dean Kamen's Magical Water Machine Could Save... →
At this juncture, the average human might conclude that Dean Kamen is totally out of his mind.
The Way We Live Now: The Screening of America →
Did this compromise my experience of the movie? Maybe, but then again, compared to what? Hadn’t there always been commercial breaks and scenes interrupted by a trip to the bathroom or the refrigerator?
Alone Together →
Manhattan is the capital of people living by themselves. But are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it, say a new breed of loneliness researchers, who argue that urban alienation is largely a myth.
The Un-Paulson →
Why Timothy Geithner is a strong choice for treasury secretary.
Candace Gingrich: A Letter to My Brother Newt... →
I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, “There you go, again.”
Bad Technology: A Call for Revolution Against Beta... →
I’m tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The “This will work in the next version.” The “It’s in our roadmap.” The “Buy now and upgrade later.” The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn’t tested enough...
Inform →
Journalism’s battle for relevance in an
age of too much information.
Is it OK to be liberal again, instead of... →
If the conservative era is over, can liberals come out of their defensive crouch and call themselves liberals again, instead of progressives?
The Formerly Middle Class →
At the beginning of every recession, there are people who see the downturn as an occasion for moral revival: Americans will learn to live without material extravagances. They’ll simplify their lives. They’ll rediscover what really matters: home, friends and family.
But recessions are about more than material deprivation. They’re also about fear and diminished expectations. The cultural...
Watching the Times struggle (and what you can... →
“All the News That’s Fit to Print” is the heart of the problem. It was never that, of course. It was “All the News That Fits.” The entire mindset of (every) newspaper has been driven by the cost of paper, the finite nature of paper, the cost of delivery and the cycle of a daily paper. You run enough articles to fit as many ads as you can sell.These are artifacts of...
A short history of the bagel →
When my family first moved to Larchmont, N.Y., in 1946, my father had a feeling that the neighbors living behind us were Jewish. In those days, you didn’t broadcast your religion, so he devised a plan that would reveal their cultural background. We would go to the Bronx and bring back some bagels. If our neighbors knew what the rolls were, they were Jewish. If they stared at them in...
Eric Oliver on the Bigot Belt →
Of particular note was the broad swath of counties running from Oklahoma and East Texas through Arkansas to Kentucky and West Virginia where the Republican vote margins actually increased from 2004. How, in an election year so dominated by Democrats, did these counties go from merely “red” to “scarlet”?
Requiem for a Maverick →
John McCain ran one of the most incompetent, schizo campaigns in history — and for that we owe him big-time.
A Seafood Snob Ponders the Future of Fish →
…it may be the way of the future: most of the fish we’ll be eating will be farmed, and by midcentury, it might be easier to catch our favorite wild fish ourselves rather than buy it in the market.
The end of America's consumption boom →
America’s return to thrift presages a long and deep recession.
Magic and the Brain: How Magicians Trick the Mind →
Magicians have been testing and exploiting the limits of cognition and attention for hundreds of years. Neuroscientists are just beginning to catch up.
Ohio Postcard: Eviction →
By the end of June, 2.4 million homes were in foreclosure or prolonged deliquency.
Why you should care about the Baltic Dry Index →
The best economic indicator you’ve never heard of.
The Forces Driving Women Out of Computer Science →
Ellen Spertus, a graduate student at M.I.T., wondered why the computer camp she had attended as a girl had a boy-girl ratio of six to one. And why were only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. female? She published a 124-page paper, “Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?”, that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a...
Seth Godin: How to make money using the Internet →
Connect the disconnected to each other and you create value.
A Better Brew →
The rise of extreme beer.
The Perils of Efficiency →
Instead of a more efficient system, we should be trying to build a more reliable one.
Secrets of Talk Radio →
The former news director of WTMJ reveals how talk show hosts like Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner work to get us angry.
Tesla's Electric Car Loses Its Juice →
Tesla is a classic Silicon Valley project: it’s late and over budget, still has bugs and, at $109,000, costs more than planned.
Love in the Time of Darwinism →
A report from the chaotic postfeminist dating scene, where only the strong survive.
Depression Economics Returns →
All indications are that the new administration will offer a major stimulus package. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.
So the question becomes, will the Obama people dare to propose something on that scale?
Let’s hope that the answer to that question is yes, that the new administration will indeed be that...
How to Run a Con →
The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of [The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System], the human brain makes us feel good when we help others—this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. “I need your...
Panic in Detroit →
This is not your father’s Oldsmobile we’re rescuing.
Hungry →
Marketers taught us this. Marketers taught well-fed consumers to want to eat more than we needed, and consumers responded by spending more and getting fat in the process.
Marketers taught to us amplify our wants, since needs aren’t a particularly profitable niche for them.
Depression 2009: What would it look like? →
Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one.
Blacks, gays, and immutability →
Nov. 4 was a good day to be black. It was not a good day to be gay.
Onion Nation: A Look Inside the Offices of The... →
If its absurdist twists and wicked parodies of conventional journalism are just a joke, thecountry’s leading satirical newspaper is having the last laugh.
Letter from Iceland →
Now allow this country’s banks – virtually unregulated – to borrow more than 10 times their country’s gross domestic product from the international wholesale money markets. Watch as a Graf Zeppelin of debt propels its self-styled “Viking Raiders” across the world’s financial stage, accumulating companies like gamblers hoarding chips. Then sit on the sidelines as the airship flies home and...
Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee →
“Consumer confidence” is plummeting nationwide. […] Most of this drop represents people who suddenly are poorer, or feel that way. But there also is some concern that the great American shopping spree may be over. We have all the stuff we need.
Obama and the War on Brains →
Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.
Corporations versus the Market; or, Whip... →
Defenders of the free market are often accused of being apologists for big business and shills for the corporate elite. Is this a fair charge?
GOP should ask why U.S. is on the wrong track →
By Ron Paul.
Annoying Body Glitches: Can We Prevent Them? →
Our bodies are organized jumbles of parts and functions with specific purposes, but like any fine-tuned machine, there is room for internal error every now and then. We’ve all experienced some variation of these “issues”—hiccups, spasms, odd stomach noises, and so forth. Many are embarrassing or annoying, but so common that we don’t think much about their causes or potential solutions. However,...
The EPA's Stalin era →
“It’s absolutely shocking what’s going on,” say insiders. Secretive changes have diluted science and jeopardized public health. Will Obama overcome Bush’s toxic legacy?
Five Days at the End of the World →
My visit to Afghanistan, and the War on Terror movie that Hollywood would never make.
Why Can't Johnny Jump Tall Buildings? →
Parents expect way too much from their kids.
America the Illiterate →
We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the...
Why thinking in the shower may be an ideal model... →
I imagine we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone reading these words who hasn’t had an epiphany, big or small, under the cadence of falling water.
Geek Pop Star →
Malcolm Gladwell’s elegant and wildly popular theories about modern life have turned his name into an adjective—Gladwellian! But in his new book, he seeks to undercut the cult of success, including his own, by explaining how little control we have over it.
Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence →
We have to end adolescence as a social experiment. We tried it. It failed. It’s time to move on. Returning to an earlier, more successful model of children rapidly assuming the roles and responsibilities of adults would yield enormous benefit to society.
The Mini Depression and the Maximum-Strength... →
When Barack Obama takes office in January, he will inherit a mess. What to do?
By Robert Reich.