Month: April 2009

  • Gluttony and Adultery

    Are our evolving social and cultural judgments about sex and food related? Mary Eberstadt, fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, believes so. Pulitzer Prize-winning op-ed columnist George Will discusses Eberstadt’s theory, stating that nowadays we judge people more for their food choices than their sexual behaviours, whereas a generation ago these moral poles would have…

  • Growing Sentences

    How to develope sentences in the style of David Foster Wallace (visit Jason’s post to see an example of how powerful this can be for prose): Begin with an idea, a string of ideas. Use them in a compound sentence. Add rhythm with a dependent clause. Elaborate using a complete sentence as interrupting modifier. Append…

  • The Future of Human Health

    In seven videos, each between 9 and 19 minutes in length, some of Stanford’s best researchers discuss cutting-edge cognitive science research. Learn about the frontiers of human health from seven of Stanford’s most innovative faculty members. Inspired by a format used at the TED Conference, each speaker delivers a highly engaging talk in just 10-20…

  • Talk to Strangers

    In an article discussing collaborative spam filtering and the Tor project, Bruce Schneier offers some refreshing advice: telling children not to talk to strangers isn’t strictly the best advice: When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: “don’t talk to strangers.” Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it’s prudent to steer clear…