Personal Growth

“As the 21st century unfolds, perhaps religions will undergo a radical shift: to become more hybrid in nature and flexible in narrative.” A professor of genetics on the malleability of myths.

“Members of the Cuban arts community say more musicians, artists, actors and writers are traveling between the two countries.” The Times reports on a burgeoning arts exchange.

“The dignity of sumo wrestling vanishing. Allegations of match-fixing, dope-smoking, orgies, and ties to gangsters among the sport’s top stars have enraged the Japanese public.”

“Behind every successful entrepreneur is a vast network.” And the more diverse the network, the better, says a study of successful entrepreneurs’ social networks.

“For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it?” Newsweek says a more active approach to teaching creativity is needed.

“Plato imagined philosopher-kings guarding his utopia. Here in Aspen, we have Bill Gates.” The Atlantic says Gates’ unique solutions to global problems were on display at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

“If everyone writes, there’ll be more bad novels. And if writing is thought sacred, they will become more boring.” The Telegraph doesn’t think the novel is dead, just boring.

“Fiction has now become a museum-piece genre most of whose practitioners are more like cripplingly self-conscious curators or theoreticians than writers,” says the polemical Lee Siegel.

If Americans have an impending sense that our present moment represents a capitalized End of Something, let us take the moment to exhale and appreciate the tranquility of finality.

July 3rd marks an equally important day for American independence, says Walter Rodgers, recalling how the Union’s Civil War victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg presaged the modern state.

New research suggests that reciting maxims to one’s self, such as “Everyone makes mistakes,” can help the ego recover from guilt associated with acting against one’s principles.

“The new national space policy calls on NASA to target missions beyond low-Earth orbit — such as to an asteroid — by 2025, with the eventual goal of sending astronauts to Mars.” The CSM reports.

Manute Bol’s dream of building schools in his war-torn home of Sudan lives on through his charity, Sudan Sunrise. His untimely death brings to life the magnanimity of an NBA curiosity.

“Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think,” says Bryan Caplan at The Wall Street Journal.

“I prefer fiction because in fiction I do whatever I want,” says Chilean-American author Isabel Allende, who has published 18 books of fiction, non-fiction and memoirs over the past three […]

How did writer, actor, and filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell come out? “I think I told a woman who was on top of me,” he jokes in his segment of Big […]

Lionel Tiger, the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, is no stranger to controversy.  He has made a career out of “telling it like he sees it” when […]

Moral dogmatism is the true enemy of free thought, says Jonah Goldberg, not ideology; attention to the facts must supersede commitment to a scripted morality.

Scaling back Bush’s promised manned moon landing left Obama in the cold of deep space, but now compromises are being made with NASA.

While Jews across the world celebrate Passover, it’s an opportune time for many to re-familiarize themselves with the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. The incredible story has been […]

Robots and smart sensors designed to support independent living for the elderly and infirm are being developed by researchers at the University of the West of England.

Skeptic and magician James Randi has pulled off yet another daring escape. The famous debunker of scam psychics has emerged from the closet at the age of 81. Randi made […]

“Lone crusader” Yukio Ubukata has taken on the big guns of Japan’s ruling party by speaking on the radio to denounce what he calls the “dangerous concentration of power and money”.

This week around 200 experts will gather in California to work out how research into the possibilities of geoengineering the planet to combat climate change should proceed.

The only privately owned copy of a historic list of names of Jews that were saved from Nazi concentration camps by Oskar Schindler has gone on sale for $2.2 million.

The Federal government has finally ruled that the needs of American pedestrians and cyclists must be equal to and not lesser-than the rights of motorists on the road.

From next Friday until August 31 slightly different sculptures of naked men will interrupt New York’s skyline as artist Anthony Gormley kicks off his first every New York-based installation.

At least 50 trees around the world have staggeringly been around for more than a millennium, as trees are one of the oldest living organisms to grace this Earth.

The New York Times’ Op-Ed writer Adabi Tricia Nwaubani from Nigeria remarks on the recent violence in Jos and a Nigerian policy of passivity and selective amnesia.

A gay US Marine has written a tongue-in-cheek editorial in the New Yorker asserting that the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuality makes him a better soldier.