The human brain is considered to be pretty quick, but it lacks many of qualities of a super-efficient computer. For instance, we have trouble switching between tasks and cannot seem to actually do more than one thing at a time. So despite the increasing options—and demands—to multitask, our brains seem to have trouble keeping tabs on many activities at once. A new study, however, illustrates how the brain can simultaneously keep track of two separate goals, even while it is busy performing a task related to one of the aims, hinting that the mind might be better at multitasking than previously thought. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In September 2009 I submitted an article to the feminist journal Women’s Studies International Forum, and in February 2010 I was informed that the journal had decided against publication. Nothing unusual in that, of course. No doubt the great majority of articles submitted to journals are rejected, for a multitude of reasons. But when I enquired why no reason had been given, the Editor-in-Chief replied that the paper had not been sent out for review as she did not feel that it had sufficient evidence in terms of references or citations to back up some of the claims that were made. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
When it comes to religion, the connection between believing and belonging is a tangled one. The notion of an established church or credo representing the nation at prayer stretches back through history and lingers on, to almost everyone’s dissatisfaction, in the current Church of England. For, in Britain at least, alongside all the other privatisations of recent decades, there has been a privatisation of faith, with people exploring religion in their heads and hearts but increasingly rarely in houses of God. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Some pizza deliverymen are safe drivers, and though it seems incredible given the recent news to the contrary, some clergymen are pious, some politicians monogamous and some car dealers honest. There are ethical Boy Scout masters, too. Yet nothing is so satisfying to the lazy mind as news that reinforces a negative stereotype. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
For years Bob Geldof, former Boomtown Rat turned self-styled saviour of Africa, was celebrated as a secular saint. To the annoyance of some of us he was fawned over by the world media and world leaders, who loved the gruff, messy-haired, expletive-laden “authenticity” he apparently brought to the discussion about global poverty. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Early on Friday morning, March 11, 2005, a caravan of vehicles drove from New Orleans to a home outside the city of Lafayette, in the heart of “Cajun country.” State police, a SWAT team, U.S. customs officials, and federal agents, with the aid of the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LSPCA) and the Humane Society of the United States, raided the home of Floyd Boudreaux. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Hilberg’s anger toward the German refugee and New York intellectual erupted with the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem, in which Arendt told the tale of Adolf Eichmann, the man responsible for implementing the Final Solution, against the backdrop of his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. (Eichmann was captured by Mossad agents in Argentina in May 1960. His trial in Jerusalem began in April 1961, and he was executed in May 1962.) <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The Full English is the one meal that England does well, with fat bangers, sizzling rashers and eggs oozing sunshine, strong tea and two buttered toast. This is food that makes you feel good just thinking about it, a platter that pulls on the heartstrings (as well as straining the heart). It’s an icon of Englishness, as much of a symbol as the flag of St George, but here’s the thing: who really eats it these days? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
But did Beijing need two hundred thousand soldiers and school children to demonstrate its strength or ascendancy? The dominant narrative about China today is that it will, within a few short decades, become the preeminent power in the international system. Its economy, according to the conventional wisdom, was the first to recover from the global downturn and will eventually go on to become the world’s largest. Geopolitical dominance will inevitably follow. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The non-phenomenon of basketball’s hot hand has been addressed elsewhere. In brief, the findings indicate that a player who has hit a number of shots, and is thus considered hot, is no more likely to hit the next shot than his or her overall shooting percentage would predict. <<<To read full article, click here.>>
“Yes,” I say, “my wife and I are at the grandparent stage,” and then pause and ask the person to whom I’ve just said it if he or she knows that the reason grandparents and grandchildren get on so well is that they share a common enemy. All the world, like the man said, is a stage. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Predictions are always perilous. Many of us recall the hearty enthusiasm of the Bowen report of 1989, which assured prospective graduate students that they would find “a substantial excess demand for faculty in the arts and sciences” when they earned their degrees in the mid-1990s. Of course, they did not. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Why does Sarah Palin talk the way she does? Just what is this sort of thing below? We realize that more and more Americans are starting to see the light there and understand the contrast. And we talk a lot about, OK, we’re confident that we’re going to win on Tuesday, so from there, the first 100 days, how are we going to kick in the plan that will get this economy back on the right track and really shore up the strategies that we need over in Iraq and Iran to win these wars? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Lori Whisenant knows that one way to improve the writing skills of undergraduates is to make them write more. But as each student in her course in business law and ethics at the University of Houston began to crank out—often awkwardly—nearly 5,000 words a semester, it became clear to her that what would really help them was consistent, detailed feedback. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Sandy, Jim and Karen work at a downtown community centre where they help low-income residents apply for rental housing. Sandy has a bad feeling about Jim: She notices that when black clients come in, he tends to drift to the back of the office. Sandy suspects racism (she and Jim are both white). On the other hand, she also notices that Jim seems to get along well with Karen, who is black. As the weeks go by, Sandy becomes more uncomfortable with the situation. But she feels uncertain about how to handle it. Test question: What should Sandy do?
For many libertarians, “the road to serfdom” is not just the title of a great book but also the window through which they see the world. We’re losing our freedom, year after year, they think. They (we) quote Thomas Jefferson: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” We read books with titles like Freedom in Chains, Lost Rights, The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans, and yes, The Road to Serfdom. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The greatest economic power in Europe, linchpin of the eurozone, Germany is not the country it was. Since 1990 – the year of reunification – it has become significantly poorer, with a lower per capita income and a lot less money to spare since pouring money into the former East Germany. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In 1952, the landscape of American fiction was dominated by a group of literary celebrities who had published their first novels after or near the end of World War II. James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, Gore Vidal: these were the up-and-comers about whom everyone was talking in the days when serious fiction still mattered to the educated public, the ones who were expected to do great things. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
When Times sportswriter Mike Penner announced he’d become Christine Daniels, he sought ‘joy and fulfillment.’ After a year of accolades and ordeals, he returned as Mike. But his struggles continued. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Decades before Kinsey, Stanford professor Clelia Mosher polled Victorian-era women on their bedroom behavior—then kept the startling results under wraps. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
More than a lingua franca, the rapid adoption of ‘decaffeinated English’, according to the man who coined the term ‘Globish’, makes it the world’s most widely spoken language. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Whenever demography is the subject a panicky headline usually follows. Generally these take the form of anxieties about overpopulation. “Are there just too many people in the world?” asks Johann Hari in the Independent. “The World’s population is still exploding,” confirms the Optimum Population Trust (patron David Attenborough). Though equally they could be about the opposite. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The internet in Iran is, however, subject to harsh controls, just as other walks of life are. Government restrictions on bandwidth make uploads of photos and videos very slow. Transmissions of text messages on mobile phones were blocked for three weeks following the June 12th presidential election, and government disruption of social networking sites such as Facebook further impeded the ability of Iranians to share information and to organize protests. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Let’s suppose that Martin Marty and Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong are always utterly forthright when they hold forth in churches, “speaking truth to power,” challenging the conservative “common Christianity” that they have moved beyond, but how often–if ever–have they had to face a congregation that could ruin their careers if pushed too hard? <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
We’ve all heard about the “greatest generation,” which lived through the Depression of the 1930s and won World War II (with a little help from our Russian friends). We’ve also been subjected to innumerable analyses about the “baby boomers,” born in the late 1940s and 1950s, who instigated the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and have shaped American society ever since. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In many of the dusty railroad towns out West in the late 1880s and early decades of the 1900s, there was only one place to get a decent meal, one place to take the family for a celebration, one place to eat when the train stopped to load and unload: a Fred Harvey restaurant. And the owner’s decision to import an all-female waitstaff meant that his restaurants offered up one more important and hard-to-find commodity in cowboy country: wives. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
The young woman by the window turns to the man in the middle and smiles. He smoothes her hair and tells her she is going to love his city. Not even off the ground, and they have already created a private lair in the still-upright theater of coach. The man in the aisle seat immediately experiences feelings of exclusion, envy, and inadequacy. Travel, most people believe, is best when shared—an attitude that makes the solitary traveler one of life’s losers. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Would Barack Obama, 20 years from now, be giving that talk if he hadn’t won a quick promotion? Or would Obama be the kindly president of the Senate in Frank Capra’s tale who encourages young Smith to stick to his principles with a smile of solidarity here, a helpful ruling there? Hard to say, just as almost everything connected to the concept of “compromise” threatens philosophical confusion. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
In eminent particle physicist, John Polkinghorne helped make one of the breakthroughs that transformed modern physics: the discovery of the quark (an unseen but fundamental constituent of matter). He held the prestigious post of Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge, but in 1979, Polkinghorne surprised many with the announcement that he planned to become an Anglican priest. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
This week Oliver will host his first American network television show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, a Ryan Seacrest-produced reality series debuting Friday evening on ABC. In a departure from Oliver’s previous American shows, which focused on teaching people who want to cook how do so, Food Revolution is a bold attempt by Oliver to begin forcing every American to cook and buy only the foods he thinks we should eat. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
