The stubborn power of ancient symbols…
ABOUT THOSE FLOWERS AND CANDLES
December 20th, 2012 §
THOUGHTS ON THE MEANING OF LIFE
December 15th, 2012 §
SO FAST IT’S INVISIBLE
November 19th, 2012 §
If a UFO is moving too fast for your eyes to notice it, your video camera probably won’t catch it either.
THE PROBLEM WITH DOCTORS
July 30th, 2012 §
BAD NEWS BOSON?
July 4th, 2012 §
A good day for Peter Higgs — but for the rest of us, maybe not so much.
THE COGNITIVE SEPARATION – III
May 30th, 2012 §
MEDIA WHORES
May 28th, 2012 §
AUTHORITECH VS. LIBERTECH
March 25th, 2012 §
THE COMFORTS OF OUTRAGE
March 23rd, 2012 §
Why has media-driven offense-taking over minor, off-color remarks become epidemic?
CAMERA ARTIFACT-OLOGY?
March 17th, 2012 §
THE DEEP LESSON OF THE GOLDMAN SACHS LETTER
March 16th, 2012 §
It’s about much more than Wall Street — it’s about the hazards of cultural evolution.
HEALTHY SKEPTICISM
March 14th, 2012 §
A paper in PLoS One reports “three unsuccessful attempts to replicate” Daryl Bem’s “Feeling the future” experiment.
THOUGHTS ON THE NEXT PERSIAN WAR
March 2nd, 2012 §
US policy towards countries such as Iran treats war as a “last resort” — but in so doing makes war almost inevitable
PART MAN PART MONKEY
February 9th, 2012 §
HOW TO END THE CULTURE WARS
February 8th, 2012 §
THE COGNITIVE SEPARATION (rerun)
January 31st, 2012 §
TAXATION WITHOUT COGNIZATION
January 27th, 2012 §
AVERAGE IS OVER?
January 26th, 2012 §
Then why does the New York Times still employ the mediocrity Thomas L. Friedman?
WHY GET MARRIED?
January 1st, 2012 §
THE COMING NON-PROFIT REVOLUTION
December 31st, 2011 §
What if consumers decide not to buy stuff from corporations that make profits?
THE DEMISE OF GUYTHINK
December 27th, 2011 §
Empathy, political correctness and the feminization of Western culture — and why we should worry
SUBLIMINAL SINS
December 20th, 2011 §
THE SEDUCTRESS WITH A THOUSAND FACES
December 4th, 2011 §
THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: OUR MOST WATCHABLE REALITY SHOW
December 2nd, 2011 §
NO SOUP FOR YOU
November 22nd, 2011 §
THE EMU AND THE SUPERCOMMITTEE
November 22nd, 2011 §
ACKROYD’S GHOSTS
October 31st, 2011 §
I’m looking forward to reading Peter Ackroyd’s book ‘The English Ghost‘
HOW WE HAVE CHANGED
September 11th, 2011 §
In a secular age, public grief has become more religious.
AGAINST STEVE JOBS
August 24th, 2011 §
WHY A POLTERGEIST WON’T HURT YOU
July 28th, 2011 §
TRICKSTER SCHMICKSTER
July 22nd, 2011 §
Why the ‘trickster’ concept is of little or no use in understanding the paranormal
GOODBYE TO POLITICS (AS WE KNOW IT)
June 18th, 2011 §
If politicians these days seem unusually venal or narcissistic, is it because politics as public service is now an impossible task?
HO HUM?
June 12th, 2011 §
GOODBYE TO COLLEGE
June 11th, 2011 §
The mismatch between modern undergraduate education and the needs of the modern economy is now untenable.
ROBOPOCALYPSE NOW
June 3rd, 2011 §
People sometimes worry about the displacement of workers by rapid advances in technology, but seldom have numbers or charts to back up their worries.
Well, here’s a fairly grim chart. It depicts labor’s share of US income (broadly, the % of GDP that goes to pay workers), which goes down as companies’ rely less on human workers, more on technology (an extreme example being Facebook, with an estimated market value of $85 billion, and only 2,000 employees). Look at how steep the collapse is since 2001 — and maybe it’s just getting started. See also my previous posts on this looming sociocultural problem (here and here).
CELEBRITIES: A MODEST PROPOSAL
June 1st, 2011 §
A Modest Proposal for curbing the cult of Celebrity, and for making better social use of existing Celebrities.
BAD DRONES
May 16th, 2011 §
THE RETURN OF THE KING?
May 15th, 2011 §
Is the extreme egotism of some powerful people a mental disorder or a behavioral atavism?
THE UNTOPPABLE STUNT
May 13th, 2011 §
A problem that action-movie directors and terror-maestros have in common.
THE FREQUENCY OF GLOBAL EVENTS
May 12th, 2011 §
How often can we expect mega events like the Bin Laden assassination or the Tohoku quake/tsunami? About every seven weeks, give or take.
REMOTE EMOTION
May 4th, 2011 §
Many people find this White House Situation Room photo intensely affecting, but can’t explain why. I think I can.
AN INSIDIOUS INFLUENCE
April 29th, 2011 §
What explains the bizarre epidemic of worker suicides at France Telecom?
CULTURE-DOUBT
April 24th, 2011 §
MAX-QUAKE MAX?
March 12th, 2011 §
Of the fifteen strongest earthquakes recorded since 1900, five have occurred in the past seven years. That’s 33% of the total concentrated within about 6% of the time span.
Is it because recording methods have become more sensitive recently? Probably not, since even old-tech seismographs should easily pick up these 8.0+ quakes.
Is it merely a statistical fluke? Hard to say. Others (including the USGS) have suggested that for smaller major earthquakes there is no meaningful pattern.
However, for the 15 “max-quakes” listed here by the USGS, the timing definitely is clumpy, as if the factors that give rise to them do become more intense, for some reason, every so often. Four of the top fifteen occurred during 1957-65 — and if we extend the list to 16, then 5 of these 16 occurred in that period. So purely from these data, it appears (though it is impossible to prove) that a previous “max-quake max” period occurred about fifty years ago, and we are in another such period now, but perhaps near its end — or grand finale.
MY SWEAT FOR YOUR SINS (rerun)
February 21st, 2011 §
What ancient logic lies behind our modern endurance-for-charity events?
