A Race of Storytellers
In the 1960’s, neuroscience researcher Michael Gazzaniga performed a series of now-famous experiments upon a set of patients who had had their corpus callosum—the thick body of nerve fibers which...
View ArticleWhen Science Looks Like Religion
The battle for the claim to which tribe is truly “scientific” has again heated up. Fueled by a prickly exchange between Michael Shermer, assuming the liberals-are-anti-science corner in Scientific...
View ArticleGovernment: Once Necessary, but Not Inevitable
Most people accept the desirability and necessity of a centralized state to maintain order and provide a basic standard of living for its wards. Like the old David Foster Wallace riff about the fish...
View ArticleClans, States, and Individual Liberty
Imagine a society without a centralized system of law. In this world, people form social groups associated by kinship, marriage, and religious affinity. Through repeated interactions and shared...
View ArticleThe Economics of ‘Slut-Shaming’
From the prim Puritan vengeance wracked upon the steadfast Hester Prynne to the targeted sexual critique of Ke$ha’s (self-described) “positive, fun” music, libidinous ladies can never seem to get much...
View ArticleThe News and The Newsroom
Will McAvoy is on a mission to civilize. The lead anchor of the fictional Atlantis Cable News channel is mad as hell—and he’s not going to take it anymore. The self-satirized Republican in Name Only...
View ArticlePortrait of an Irrational Mind
The great tragedy of Don Quixote was not that he was a madman. The tragedy was that he realized this, at the very end of his life, when he was powerless to do anything. He lived just long enough to...
View ArticleYour Media Diet is Immoral
Moral determinations require context. Modern journalism, which faces a powerful tension between the context that is morally relevant and the context which makes a good narrative, has to cope with...
View ArticleBitcoin Is Great, But It Won’t Fix Our Monkey Brains
Bitcoin is now generally understood to be A Thing, and a particularly exciting one at that. Once-fashionable skepticism for its own sake is quickly becoming less click-worthy than this gripping...
View ArticleA Gentle Introduction to Neoreaction (for Libertarians)
A puckish new brand of right-wing radical subverts the postmodern power machine each day over Twitter and RSS for fun and praxis. It’s a real hoot to watch. These rudely triggering firebrands are...
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