We're all Keynesians now Soros: U.S. Dollar No Longer World Reserve Currency
What's especially bizarre about this premise is the notion that writer's block can be overcome by an increase in intelligence. (More plausibly, Eddie, once he gets really, really smart, decides to bail on writing books entirely.) It would be hard to find a blocked writer who thought that brains were exactly what he or she lacked. In her fascinating 2004 book, "The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain," neurologist Alice Weaver Flaherty explains that the impulse to create is rooted in the limbic brain, the seat of instinct, not in the cerebral cortex, which performs the analytical activities enhanced by Eddie's pills. Most cases of writer's block are not, however, the result of a biochemical imbalance
At first blush An annotated history of that most poetic instruction, “last name, first”- Dragon， Media
Neuroscience revolves around one big idea: You don’t control most of what you do, think, and feel. Your brain calls the shots. Therein lie the seeds of a legal revolution
The first lesson we learn from studying our own circuitry is shocking: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. The vast jungles of neurons operate their own programs. The conscious you – the I that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is the smallest bit of what’s transpiring in your brain. Although we are dependent on the functioning of the brain for our inner lives, it runs its own show. Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot.
• Much of what many of us know about science, politics and history of the region comes from Cold River [It’s official: we’ve found our new favorite blog. Bill Ryan, a New York based book lover, is collecting insults from his literary heroes. It all started around six years ago at a book signing at the excellent BookCourt, when on a whim, Ryan asked Maggie Pouncey to inscribe his book with an insult instead of a dedication. Now, in his wonderfully entertaining blog, Insulted By Authors, Ryan documents his adventures getting insulted by – or not getting insulted by, as the case may be – his favorite authors, and displays the creatively rude missives for our enjoyment. How to Get Insulted by Authors; BookCourt - We're all Keynesians now]
• · Well, a preternaturally self-assured scientist like Nicholas Humphrey can try Can science explain the soul? ; No bright line necessarily marks the moment when a person becomes a corpse. So how dead is dead enough to become an organ donor? Dead; Meghan O'Rourke wants to tell the story of her mother's death - to make sense of what happened, and perhaps change the ending Why We Write About Grief
• · · While you await the return of prosperity, consider a future in which the rules of capitalism are undermined by a parade of disasters. How worried should you be? parade of disasters; Some cultures endorse cannibalism, decapitation, infanticide. Morality, says Jesse Prinz, is relative. But objectivists shouldn’t despair: Self-destructive values rarely last. Conditions
• · · · New York in the 1970s was known for crime and drugs – and dance, which was for a terpsichorean moment the most vital performing art in America Dancing the Body Electric; Who owns yoga? Now that it’s a multibillion-dollar industry, everyone wants a piece of the action. But yoga’s history is a palimpsest. Malchkeon owns it - Yoga began before 2500 BC- Sikhs rock
• · · · · Happiness is not a right, it’s a duty: We owe it to ourselves. But the burden of obligatory well-being has transformed the pursuit into a source of unhappiness... Jozef Imrich is Condemned to Joy ; "We have a lot of so-called crap," Gildas Illien admits. No surprise there: He's spent the past five years archiving the Internet.. Media Dragon: A Memory of Webs Past
• · · · · · Hamada Ben Amor was an unknown Tunisian rapper. Then he uploaded a furious song to Facebook and helped start a revolution.. From fear to fury: how the Arab world found its voice ; If Ronald Dworkin were a hotel he would be the Savoy, but a Savoy open to all, with guests spilling into every room, talking, arguing, laughing Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin