Daniel Kahneman describes two selves. Your experiencing self lives in the present. It cares about what is happening right now. Experiencing self is honest, forthright and direct. Ask your experiencing self if you are happy and it’ll give you an … Continue reading →

Continuing his campaign to be Writer of the Decade (2001 to 2011), Robert Wright takes on the Toyota madness. My back-of-the-envelope calculations (explained in a footnote below) suggest that if you drive one of the Toyotas recalled for acceleration problems … Continue reading →

I experience stabbing pains of guilt when I read about the Iraq Inquiry in Britain. That horrible story no longer moves me to anger; I just shake my head and keep walking. I am sincerely grateful, therefore, to Daniel Larison … Continue reading →

How To Report The News – Watch more Funny Videos

Next time someone tells you that the republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility and/or growth, show them this (from the economist) and have them annotate the decades with a red or blue marker.

They say that without religion, we would not have the Sistine Chapel or Handel’s Messiah or the cathedral at Rouens. Well, without atheism Julia Sweeney would not have made Letting Go of God. After an hour of listening to Julia’s … Continue reading →

Skip this one unless you are really into Ted talks and/or Elizabeth Gilbert. Or maybe just skip to the last minute for her inspirational idea. Elizabeth recounts the Greek idea that genius is not something we are, it’s something we … Continue reading →

You probably know that the US spends more of its GDP on health care than any other OECD nation (for better outcomes). Yet every major country spends very significantly less of its national output on health than we do. As … Continue reading →

Marvellous visualization of where friends tend to cluster in Facebook. Apparently everyone in Dixie knows someone in Atlanta and all the Mormons are friends with each other. My latest visualization shows the information by location, with connections drawn between places … Continue reading →

Well, I made it through the first 100 and the most striking thing about the list is that they sure like those greatest hits albums at Rolling Stone… and the Beatles. Although, oddly, they didn’t include any Beatles Greatest Hits … Continue reading →