14 Lessons From Benjamin Franklin   Benjamin Franklin was a man of action. Over his lifetime, his curiosity and passion fueled a diverse range of interests. He was a writer (often using a pseudonym), publisher, diplomat, inventor and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His...

These days, spotting the future requires a different set of tools. There’s an infinite amount of ink and pixels spilled on most any topic. So how do we spot the future—and how might you? The seven rules that follow are not a bad place to start pinpointing the inventions and trends that...

Being online does change your brain, but so does making a cup of tea. A better question to ask is what parts of the brain are regular internet users using.   This modern age has brought with it a new set of worries. As well as watching our weight and worrying about our souls, we now have...

The “dangerous” realisation that there is no top-down meaning; that our actions aren’t found to be important by anyone (or One) other than ourselves. This idea destroyed and continues to destroy many ideas I embraced (and that I encounter). Based on this, one must ask what follows. One...

Using Cognitive Science to Unleash Your Hidden Creativity   Everybody has their own pet theory about how to generate ideas and be productive: some chug caffeine, others relax; some work in groups, others work alone; some work at night, others in the morning. This blog draws from recent...

In memoriam: After years of health problems, Facts has finally died   A quick review of the long and illustrious career of Facts reveals some of the world’s most cherished absolutes: Gravity makes things fall down; 2 + 2 = 4; the sky is blue. But for many, Facts’ most...

Investigating what is right or wrong often leads one into territory demarcated as a No-Man’s Land, to places forbidden, to territory thought too harsh, horrible or “dangerous” to explore. I am not smart enough to be a discoverer of these countries, but more a cartographer, mapping out...

The problem isn’t in failing, it’s the mindset. Mindset is changeable, and by changing one mindset, one will be able to ratchet up his success faster than he ever thought possible.   Carol Dweck, a professor at Stanford, has spent her life studying the two learning mindsets:...

Too much of a good thing … positive feelings can lead to hasty judgments and stagnation The happier you are, the better, right? Not necessarily. Studies show there is a darker side to feeling good and the pursuit of happiness can sometimes make you … well, less happy. Too much...

Eric Kandel is a titan of modern neuroscience. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 not simply for discovering a new set of scientific facts (although he has discovered plenty of those), but for pioneering a new scientific approach. As he recounts in his memoir In Search of Memory, Kandel...

What our sense connectedness has to do with the osmosis of rationality and intuition   “Some of the most creative leaps ever taken by the human mind are decidedly irrational, even primal. Emotive forces are what drive the greatest artistic and inventive expressions of our species. How...

Amid the squawks and pings of our digital devices, the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile. But new support for the value of fiction is arriving from an unexpected quarter: neuroscience. Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed...

Blade Runner and the Phillip K. Dick novel that it’s based on have as one of their central themes the philosophically intriguing idea of “implanted” memories. That is, androids “born” days ago could have years and years of memories implanted in them about their lives – lives which...

On March 24th, surveillance cameras at the Taylor Made Jewelry store in Akron, Ohio captured the startling image of a red SUV crashing through the front windows with two masked men jumping out, smashing display cases, and stealing over $100,000 of jewelry in less than 2 minutes. Both men are...

Exploring the role of social media in perpetuating the culture of fear.  How do those using social media leverage fear?  How is fear spread through social media?  When and where can technology combat fear?  What are the social costs of that fear? 1. We live in a culture of fear. 2. The...

Neil McLachlan says he wants to do for music what Apple did for the personal computer. For over two decades, the scientist, artist and university professor has worked to increase music participation. “Only five per cent of people (in the West) who go through tertiary music education end up...

Jason Zweig, is a journalist; personal finance columnist, Wall Street Journal; author, Your Money and Your Brain Creativity is a fragile flower, but perhaps it can be fertilized with systematic doses of serendipity. The psychologist Sarnoff Mednick showed decades ago that some people are...

“Society has a cultural bias towards extroverts.” – Susan Cain   Susan Cain is a former lawyer who quit Wall Street to write a book about how society is geared around extroverts at the expense of introverts and the wider economy. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a...

A new breed of worker, equipped with uber-geek data-capturing tools, are about to usher in a whole new information era Recently I was preparing for a talk on the future of money, a talk I have given many times in the past, and I became absorbed with one singular thought – the relationship...

You probably don’t know what the Alcubierre warp drive is, but that’s cool. This is called the Learnin’ Corner for a reason—to pick up where our poorly-funded public education system petered to a halt in your life, and quell your eager and absorbent mind with obscure knowledge that you...

Richard Branson launches journeys to the centre of the Earth through Virgin Volcanic. Academy Award winning actor Tom Hanks to join first expedition. Only 500 people have been to space, only three people have been to the bottom of the ocean, but no one has ever attempted to journey to the...