This Summer, New York University researchers Jaime Napier and John Tost suggested that people on the Left are generally not as happy as their counterparts on the Right. Ewen Callaway explains:
The recent surge in home foreclosures, for instance, is due to poor economic choices on the part of borrowers, a conservative might think. Liberals, on [...]
John Podesta, head of the Center for American Progress (and my former boss’s boss’s boss), has written a new book, The Power of Progress. The book’s release is obviously timed perfectly for the U.S. election season. I cannot easily find a table of contents, but the book probably focuses on foreign policy, low-carbon energy, economic [...]
My second editorial column is up at Consilience.
When it comes to creating new systems, ideas, things, and experiences on planet Earth, there are two ways of making things happen. The first is blind evolution: Start with some variation, add a mechanism for selecting the fitter variants, and watch what happens. And then there is conscious [...]
My new friends over at Columbia have just published my editorial on sustainable development for Consilience.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the rise of human rights in the European imagination. By any account, human rights were a good idea. But as anyone who was around to witness the French Revolution would be able to attest, [...]
Center for American Progress Advisor Sally Steenland (whom I have spoken with personally and regard highly) is arguing that Barack and Hillary should talk about science at the upcoming “Compassion Forum” at Messiah College in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In her mind, they ought to address scientific and moral problems as one. She refers to these ruminative [...]
Lawrence Lessig appeared at the top floor of the National Press Club building in Washington on Thursday to launch the first phase of Change Congress. I listened directly in front of him in the front row, and I was pleased to see all of the tech geeks who showed up for his talk, because they [...]
The eminent Dale Carrico has offered a thoughtful discussion of Obama’s Presidential campaign. Dale provoked me to spill some scattered thoughts in the comments, which I’ll share again here. I find myself confused about the role of a nation-state in resisting pernicious forms of nationalism.