Is God Irish? | Philosophy Now Mark Twain’s sarcasm: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth […]

TEDxBloomington – Shawn Achor – “The Happiness Advantage: Linking Positive Brains to Performance” TEDxTalks

Brains Plus Brawn | Conversation | Edge “The idea then is at what point did our brains become so important that we got the idea that brain size and intelligence really mattered more than our bodies? I contend that the answer was never”

Big, Smart and Green: A Revolutionary Vision for Modern Farming Brandon Keim, Wired Science

New Evidence That Racism Isn’t ‘Natural’ – Robert Wright – The Atlantic “And they found something interesting: the racial sensitivity of the amygdala doesn’t kick in until around age 14.”

Sound of Cylons Saul Tigh

How your last name will doom your descendants centuries from now Dylan Matthews, Ezra Klein

The 20 most-watched TEDx talks so far Shirin Samimi-Moore, TED Blog

A Pig, a Girl, and a Spider: ‘Charlotte’s Web’ at 60 “Of course, death is a part of life, and that’s one of the messages of these children’s books. But there’s redemption in that love and friendship having been there before death, which is one reason we rely on these these books as formative reading […]

The marshmallow test, revisited “If a child or adult lives in an environment where promises always get broken and outcomes are unreliable, the most rational response is to eat the marshmallow right in front of her — and not wait for the promised marshmallows of the future.”