The Golden State is on fire, which means that an idea of American utopia is on fire, too. Utopias are the good places of our imagination, while dystopias are the places where everything goes terribly wrong, where evil triumphs and nature destroys her own. Frequently utopias and dystopias are the same place, because perfection may...
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will donate to charity the US$1 million Berggruen Prize for Culture and Philosophy she recently won. The prize is given annually to a “thinker whose ideas are shaping human self-understanding to advance humankind.” The recipient of the award was decided by a five-member jury that chose among over 500 nominees and...
Many nonprofits, including top universities and museums are confronting serious ethical dilemmas regarding accepting tainted money. The MIT Media Lab, an interdisciplinary research lab, has been widely criticized for taking money from late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted in 2008 for sexual exploitation of minor girls. Harvard University has now promised to give away...
The linguistic and discursive style of Donald Trump’s tweets varied systematically before, during, and after the 2016 presidential campaign, depending on the communicative goals of Trump and his team, according to a study published September 25 in PLOS ONE by Isobelle Clarke and Jack Grieve at University of Birmingham. While many journalists and academics have analysed the...
All 10 Democratic candidates in the Houston debate Sept. 13 spoke about investing public money – taxpayer dollars – in education, health care and economic opportunity for Americans. Those ideas depend on an underlying point none of them came out and said directly: Government can help citizens live better lives and achieve their dreams. Why...
Ever-widening divisions between Democrats and Republicans are believed to reflect deeply rooted ideological differences, but a new study points to a radically different interpretation: it may be mostly a matter of luck. It’s a phenomenon that Michael Macy, Cornell University professor and director of the Social Dynamics Laboratory, calls an “opinion cascade” – in which...
Researchers have long studied the motives that inspire people to join in collective action. Three factors have received particular attention: anger caused by apparent social injustice; belief in the efficacy of collective action; and politicised identity. In 2008, these factors informed a predictive model of collective action – SIMCA, or a Social Identity Model of...
Politics have been known to put adults to sleep, but political engagement could be part of children’s bedtime stories as well. Lessons about the importance of politics could be part of their early education. A new University of Kansas study analyzed political messages in the most popular picture books of the last several years to...
On June 18, the government of Canada declared a national climate emergency. The next day, the same government approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX), which will be able to move almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to the Port of Burnaby in British Columbia. If this seems like a contradiction, you...
For the most part, politicians do put their money where their mouths are. A recent study of U.S senators and representatives finds that the more liberal a politician’s voting record is, the more likely the politician is to invest in socially responsible stocks. “Socially responsible investments refer to investments in companies that reflect traditionally liberal...
