Globally Rational

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Anybody who has seen futuristic movies such as Minority Report has wondered if - or, rather, when - we will actually start to see those personal identification systems. We always get ideas about a time when every person’s identity will be known by a global computer system, so that the authorities can know when […]

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I recently read (in The Economist) about a study showing that over the course of the last 30 years, conservatives have consistently claimed to be “very happy” more often than liberals. Many people try to use this data to say that conservatism directly causes happiness… but before arriving at a conclusion like that, we […]

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Yesterday, I wrote about how we’re incentivizing scientists to stop innovating. In that post, I promised to suggest some solutions today. Here are some things we can do to foster increased scientific innovation:

We should require institutional research boards (IRBs) to include more scientifically knowledgeable personnel, so that decisions can be made by scientists […]

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In today’s world, a culture of innovation is integral to advancement at the same rate that we’ve seen in the past century, especially in the medical field. Unfortunately, some scientists have done a few unethical things in the past; because of this, we’ve decided to severely restrict all scientific research. Here is how […]

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Today is the day that many Americans will rush to the post office to get their taxes filed right at the deadline. Personally, I got a refund this year from the federal government, but I owe a couple of hundred dollars to the state government… which means that I filed my federal taxes early […]

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For those of you who haven’t been following the US election, Obama recently said the following (click here for the full transcript); some are calling it “Bittergate”:
The truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go […]

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I think we can all agree that the advancement of science, especially medical science, is of paramount importance. So why is it that the National Institutes of Health, among other similar institutions, are always low on manpower and money?
I think that the NIH needs to establish a nationwide (or, preferably, global) network of peer-reviewed […]

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If you were an employer looking at resumès (let’s say that the job candidates are actually cities), would you hire Beijing? Take a look at their resumè:

They invaded Tibet years ago and still refuse to let them have their independence; meanwhile, they continue to oppress the locals.
They refuse to accept the independent status of […]

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For the past year, my driving record has been clean and my insurance rates are about to go down. So you can imagine how I felt when a police officer lowered his window and tried to get my attention at a red light today. I didn’t know if one of my tail lights […]

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If you do a Google search for “rise and fall of the empire”, you’ll get lots of results about the British and Roman empires, and maybe about the Third Reich. You might also see something about the great post-medieval empires, such as those of Spain, France, Portugal, the Ottomans, and the Mughals. There’s […]

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