9 Posts found for source_day: 6

An excerpt from the book, The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity Will Remake American Politics.

A wide range of academic scholarship exploring political belief-formation reveals that those who identify themselves as politically conservative, for example, exhibit distinctive values underpinning their world view and their orientation towards political competition.

Conservatives, argues researcher Philip Tetlock of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, are less tolerant of compromise; … [ Read more ]

Author: Thomas B. Edsall | Source: The Atlantic (February 6, 2012) | Subjects: Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy

The savanna theory of happiness is the idea that life satisfaction is not only determined by what’s happening in the present but also influenced by the ways our ancestors may have reacted to the event. Evolutionary psychology argues that, just like any other organ, the human brain has been designed for and adapted to the conditions of an ancestral environment. Therefore, the researchers argue, our … [ Read more ]

Author: Sarah Sloat | Source: Inverse (December 6, 2016) | Subjects: Excerpts, Happiness, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology

Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era.

Author: Wade Davis | Source: Rolling Stone (August 6, 2020) | Subjects: America, Excerpts, History

Why do we get allergies? No one has a firm answer, but what is arguably the leading theory suggests that allergies are a misfiring of a defence against parasitic worms. In the industrialised world, where such infections are rare, this system reacts in an exaggerated fashion to harmless targets, making us miserable in the process.

[Ruslan] Medzhitov thinks that’s wrong. Allergies are not simply a biological … [ Read more ]

Author: Carl Zimmer | Source: Mosaic (April 6, 2015) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Health & Medicine

Political scientist Alexander George Theodoridis, an assistant professor at the University of California, Merced, is an expert on the hyper-polarized climate. He wrote in Scientific American, “My own research repeatedly shows that partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group.”

The consequences are that politicians are rewarded by their base for obstructionism, while punished for working … [ Read more ]

Author: Philip Perry | Source: Big Think (June 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy

Perspective from the right on Trump’s political challenge for the left

Author: David Frum | Source: The Atlantic (February 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

Twenty years ago, Richard Rorty warned that “a spectatorial, disgusted, mocking Left” would give rise to a populist demagogue. Is it ready now to take his advice?

Author: Conor Friedersdorf | Source: The Atlantic (July 6, 2017) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Politics & Public Policy, Trump

The same part of the brain that allows us to step into the shoes of others also helps us restrain ourselves.

Author: Ed Yong | Source: The Atlantic (December 6, 2016) | Subjects: Excerpts, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior

Despite his enormous contributions to science, Albert Einstein was no reclusive genius, his ever-eager conversations and correspondence engaging such diverse partners as the Indian philosopher Tagore and a young South African girl who wanted to be a scientist. In 1931, the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited the renowned physicist to a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas about politics and peace with a thinker of his choosing. … [ Read more ]

Authors: Albert Einstein, Maria Popova, Sigmund Freud | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) (May 6, 2013) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Military | War | Peace, Psychology | Behavior, Sociology | Anthropology