Category: ideas

Critics are lining up against the Induce Act, the anti-copying legislation now being considered by the US Congree. “The Induce Act would have a definite chilling effect on technological innovation. Even if judges are not inclined to interpret it broadly, the vague language opens the door to harassing lawsuits. Companies creating multipurpose technologies would have to be prepared to defend themselves against copyright infringement allegations.”

In recent times, the mark of good academic writing has been in the information contained. But what of style? Doesn’t it convey useful information too? “Everyone understands that the content is constant, frequently ordinary, and sometimes banal; that the (wide) variation, the arena for expression and excellence, the fun, the art – are all in the individual style.”

“For centuries, printed journals destined for university libraries have been the focus of publishing activity. The winds of change, though, are sweeping through these quiet and dusty corridors. Because of the internet, cost and distance are no longer barriers to providing the results of research to more than just a restricted and privileged few. This is leading people to ask why those results are not, in fact, freely available to all.”

“A mentally stimulating career may help to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests. According to a study carried out in the United States, those who develop the debilitating form of dementia are more likely to have had jobs that do not tax the brain. The discovery lends weight to the ‘use it or lose it’ theory.”

“For decades, psychologists have done laboratory experiments in an attempt to describe differences between the behavior of liars and of people telling the truth. Some researchers, however, are now moving away from those controlled conditions and are inching closer to understanding liars in the real world. The researchers are examining whether several behaviors that have emerged as deception signals in lab tests are associated with real-life, high-stake lies.”

Today’s twenty-somethings are constantly tagged with the ‘apathetic’ label, due in large part to their disdain for traditional activism and their embrace of an overtly cynical worldview. But could the apathy and cynicism stem from the devastating reality that a small but vocal band of activists can no longer have the world-changing impact they once did? Anyone who sits and watches a film like “Fahrenheit 9/11” or “The Corporation” will be angry at the world afterwards, but if you don’t believe that you can do anything about it, what’s the point of trying?

“Survivor” was not the first reality TV series. And it wasn’t “The Real World,” either. No, the first individual to conceive of the idea of performing ridiculous stunts in public in order to prove a point (or just amuse the neighbors) was Henry David Thoreau, says Julia Keller. But in all seriousness, the importance of Thoreau’s little stunt – abandoning city life to live like a hermit in the middle of nowhere – has been twisted and misconstrued over the years since “Walden” was written. And just as in most reality shows, Thoreau wasn’t above a slight varnishing of the truth if the editing process could help out the narrative flow.

“Dreams have captivated thinkers since ancient times, but their mystery is now closer than ever to resolution, thanks to new technology that allows scientists to watch the sleeping brain at work. Although there are still many more questions than answers, researchers are now able to see how different parts of the brain work at night, and they’re figuring out how that division of labor influences our dreams. In one sense, it’s the closest we’ve come to recording the soul.”

A new British reality TV show is taking its contestants on a sociological journey to the past, and possibly the future, of public education. The participants, all mediocre-to-abysmal students, are plucked from their regular classes, and placed in specific vocational training programs, as many UK students were in the 1960s. “At the end of the series, the results of the pupils’ exams in woodwork, metalwork and domestic science will be compared with their GCSE results. But the most interesting aspect of the programme will be whether they thrive on learning practical skills in a disciplined environment.”

Before he died last year, Edward Said mused on the powers of the artist late in life: “What of the last or late period of life, the decay of the body, the onset of ill health (which, in a younger person, brings on the possibility of an untimely end)? These issues, which interest me for obvious personal reasons, have led me to look at the way in which the work of some artists acquires a new idiom towards the end of their lives – what I’ve come to think of as a late style.”