Posts Tagged ‘Evolution’

Time for Change

In 1998 the UN declared: “a drug-free world, we can do it!” In reality, we cannot. The War on Drugs has failed. According to all available indices, it is no longer defendable. Vast expenditure on drug law enforcement has resulted in increasing levels of overall drug-use and lowered drug prices....

April 11th, 2011 | Drug Policy | Read More

Do You Want to Live Forever?

This show is all about the radical ideas of a Cambridge biomedical gerontologist called Aubrey de Grey who believes that, within the next 20-30 years, we could extend life indefinitely by addressing seven major factors in the aging process. He describes his work as Strategies for Engineered Negligible...

March 29th, 2011 | Big Ideas | Read More

Gold Farming: Virtual Slavery?

It was an hour before midnight, three hours into the night shift with nine more to go. At his workstation in a small, fluorescent-lighted office space in Nanjing, China, Li Qiwen sat shirtless and chain-smoking, gazing purposefully at the online computer game in front of him. The screen showed a lightly...

March 28th, 2011 | Social Insight | Read More

The neurons that shaped civilization

Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently discovered, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors, some of which formed the foundations of human civilization as we know it.

February 14th, 2011 | Science of the Mind | Read More

Deers of Perception

These reindeer have been fed a mushroom that makes their urine hallucinogenic. Or have they? Sam Williams visits Carsten Höller’s new ‘scientific experiment’ What could be more festive than spending a night locked in an art gallery with a dozen reindeer and a fridge full of psychedelic...

January 28th, 2011 | Health & Happiness | Read More

Genetically-Engineered Aliens?

Mirror-Image Cells Could Transform Science — or Kill Us All Dmitar Sasselov was at the end of a long day of having his mind blown when the really big idea hit him. Sasselov, an astrophysicist and head of the Origins of Life Initiative at Harvard, was sitting in the front row of a packed lecture...

December 22nd, 2010 | Science & Technology | Read More

Why the world needs WikiLeaks

he controversial website WikiLeaks collects and posts highly classified documents and video. Founder Julian Assange, who’s reportedly being sought for questioning by US authorities, talks to TED’s Chris Anderson about how the site operates, what it has accomplished — and what drives...

December 17th, 2010 | Big Ideas | Read More

A Police Chief with a Difference

Kiran Bedi has a surprising resume. Before becoming Director General of the Indian Police Service, she managed one of the country’s toughest prisons — and used a new focus on prevention and education to turn it into a center of learning and meditation. Before she retired in 2007, Kiran...

December 16th, 2010 | Social Insight | Read More

Drugs: the highs and lows

Natural or synthetic, legal or illegal, people have been taking drugs for thousands of years. High Society, a new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, explores the culture of getting out of it By the end of planning her new exhibition, Caroline Fisher had come to an interesting conclusion. “It’s...

December 14th, 2010 | Arts | Read More

Acoustic Archaeology Yielding Mind-Tripping Tricks

Recently uncovered sound effects include a clapping echo that sounds like a jungle bird. THE GIST Acoustic archaeology is an emerging field that melds acoustical analysis and old-fashioned bone-hunting. Ancient people created fun house-like temples that featured scary sound effects. Some of the sites...

December 14th, 2010 | Spirituality | Read More