Category: ideas

The majority of Americans who attend religious services regularly vote Republican. The majority of Americans who don’t attend religious services vote Democrat. “For more than a century, our culture has been divided on the question of whether individual moral actors may justly be held responsible for their deeds. Marx and Freud rocked the 19th century faith in moral responsibility and freedom of will, arguing that human beings are unknowingly in the grip of, respectively, powerful economic and psychosexual forces. Later analysts would discover other latent structures in society that supposedly determine our moral choices. Today, the ideological struggles of liberals and conservatives mirror the clash initiated by Marxists and Freudians with 19th century individualism.”

What’s the Next Big Thing in visual art? Some are making the case for figurative painting. But the truth? “There is no next big thing. In any case, the novelty of the YBA generation wore off a decade ago. For younger artists, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin probably look as old hat and establishment as Howard Hodgkin or Henry Moore. Emulating the strategies of the past generation – in terms of self-promotion as well as their more formal devices – would be pointless and self-defeating. Artists have to carve out their own territory.”

“Women of the 1600s, from queens to prostitutes, commonly exposed one or both breasts in public and in the popular media of the day, according to a study of fashion, portraits, prints, and thousands of woodcuts from 17th-century ballads. The finding suggests breast exposure by women in England and in the Netherlands during the 17th century was more accepted than it is in most countries today. Researchers, for example, say Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl baring would not even have raised eyebrows in the 17th century.”

And now, another movie that manages to destroy New York City. Why do we seem to get so much pleasure wrecking one of America’s greatest cities? “Cities are meant to be civic, communal places, yet – looking at Piranesi’s panoramas of ruined Rome, or Bill Brandt’s photographs of a lunar London during the blitz – we take a perverse pleasure in imagining them emptied. Is this because we wish our obnoxious fellow citizens dead, or because we know that the city will outlive us?”

“In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind, class-free place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal arrest record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you as the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America’s manifold unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place guaranteed to come through–even if it’s for a fleeting weekend.”

“Shout the word semiotics across a room today, and the room will very likely shout back at you, ‘What do you mean, semiotics?’ It is a good question and at the same time, according to semiotics, a uselessly subjective question, for semiotics is the study of meaning itself — or rather how images and words (like semiotics, for example) come to mean anything at all. Put another way, semiotics is about how we derive meaning from context. Brown University semiotics program produced a crop of creators that, if they don’t exactly dominate the cultural mainstream, certainly have grown famous sparring with it.”

“Many philosophers believe humans are the only species which understands that others have their own personal thoughts. That understanding is known in the trade as having a “theory of mind”, and it is considered the gateway to such cherished human qualities as empathy and deception. Biologists have learned to treat such assertions with caution. In particular, they have found evidence of theories of mind in a range of mammals, from gorillas to goats. But two recent studies suggest that even mammalian studies may be looking at the question too narrowly. Birds, it seems, can have theories of mind, too.”

These days, laptop computers employ technology scarcely dreamed of during the Apollo moon missions. Physicians prescribe gene-triggering drugs that were fantasy elixirs a decade ago. And microchips have become so small that they’re measured in billionths of a meter. But more than 80% of U.S. adults still are not knowledgeable enough to digest a science story in a major newspaper.” So how do scientists learn to explain without dumbing down?

“At least 28 high-ranking government officials, including three managers responsible for emergency operations at nuclear facilities, have fake degrees from so-called diploma mills, according to a government report issued Tuesday… The investigation, which was prompted by a request from Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), found that these schools — which charge a flat fee for a degree — received at least $170,000 in government tuition-reimbursement funds. The GAO noted that although it was able to identify 28 high-level employees from eight different agencies who had degree-mill diplomas, ‘this number is believed to be an understatement.'”

American-made consumer products have been popular all over the world. Partly, they’re sold as embodying an American lifestyle. But with America’s image declining worldwide, a new study reports that “the number of people who like and use US branded products has fallen significantly over the past year, while brands perceived to be non-American have remained relatively stable.”