Our Anger Complex
What does it mean to live in a country where anger is entertainment and power, and fights break out on airplanes? Some of this rage is by now a cultural habit; the rest is raw and fresh.
By Jeannette Cooperman
The Eighth Sense
Western scientists conveniently overlooked emotion for decades, dismissing it as irrational and female, a source of bias and hysteria best avoided altogether. Now they are forced to acknowledge that simply by paying attention to internal sensations, you can head off hysteria, angst, or dejection.
What the Metaverse Is and How It Will Seduce Us
Writing for The Atlantic, game designer and Washington University media prof Ian Bogost calls “metaverse” “a sexy, aspirational name for some kind of virtual or augmented reality play.” Also: “a fantasy of power and control.” Which seems to be the key.
How AR Could Explode Traditional Teaching
For centuries, the humanities have been taught with texts and lectures; art history with slideshows and lectures; the sciences with experiments and lectures. Then came VR and AR. And now, professors who have never felt the slightest desire to play a video game are downloading VR software, begging for I.T. help, and teaching their students—and themselves—how to construct worlds within worlds.
America’s Hair Is Falling Out
We lose our hair (and supposedly, our libido) with age, so that was my first suspect. I stood in front of the mirror, my wet hair combed and parting itself all over the place, lines of pink parceling out my head as though platting it for a subdivision.
How Latin Became Right-Wing
There is magic in ancient, little-used languages. Like rusty gates to a secret garden, they invite you into an extraordinary experience. Why do so many beautiful traditions become tainted by the flaws and confusions of the next era?
Telling the Homer G. Phillips Story at Last
Before Homer G. Phillips existed, Black St. Louisans often had to climb on a bus, feverish or in pain, and ride halfway across town, not knowing what attitude a White doctor might take toward them. Many had recovered from surgery in Ward 0400, a segregated surgical ward for Blacks in the basement of Barnes Hospital.
A Real Tree or a Fake One?
I miss finding a Christmas tree: the excursion, hopefully in the snow; walking up and down the assembled forest, looking so closely—too scrawny, not fat enough, crooked, ahhh—here’s one that’s perfect! Never perfect, in the literal sense, because it is real, and as flawed as we are.
What Do You See in These Twigs?
“These twigs could be a Rorschach inkblot test!” I told him. “I keep seeing human figures in them. . . . ” Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist and a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied the evolution of human creativity and pattern recognition, was not in the least bit surprised.
In Honor of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Who Gave Us Flow
“It’s not really play that makes you feel good,” Csikszentmihalyi realized, “but the playfulness which can be in play.” Once you experienced that relaxed, utter absorption, you wanted to feel it again and again.
Sound and Fury
Directors (like political handlers) can hesitate to be blunt, afraid to say, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Because it is safer or easier to let it ride, the mumbling is indulged.
Make It a Double, Robot
Language fails. Cecilia, however, does not. She mixes each cocktail in perfect proportions—never a little heavy on the booze, to loosen you up, or lightly, when your request slurs.