The night of 9/11

From Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush White House: Richard Clarke: That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I…

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How is high-speed high-volume inter-connectivity affecting our brains?

What happens to our brains when we sit at our computers for long periods of time interacting with the cyber world? This question was considered in an article called "Meet Your iBrain," appearing in the October/November 2008 issue of scientific American Mind. The authors cite a 2005 Kaiser family foundation…

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Steven Pinker on the credibility of science

Alternet has interviewed Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the credibility of science.   Pinker's answer bears on many of the discussions we've had at this site.  In the following excerpt, Pinker distinguishes the scientific method from the "method" of politics, though his logic applies to most things that are not science…

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