7 cultural concepts we don't have in the U.S. From the end of October through the New Year and onto Valentine's Day, it's easy to forget that the holidays we celebrate are simply cultural constructs that we can choose to engage in — or not.
The concepts and ideas we celebrate — like our spiritual beliefs and daily habits — are a choice, though sometimes it feels like we "have" to celebrate them, even if we don't feel like it. Culture is ours to do with as we choose, and that means that we can add, subtract, or edit celebrations or holidays as we see fit — because you and me and everyone reading this makes up our culture, and it is defined by us, for us, after all.
The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013. The thing about reading is this: it takes a long time.
There are innumerable books in the world, and many more good ones than can be read by any mortal in a lifetime. It’s hard to choose — especially if you’re a slow reader. So, to go along with the list of the best albums from 1963-2013, here you will find a single must-read book from each of the last 50 years. Car bombs flatten Baghdad's oldest market; at least 78 killed.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Thunderous car bombs shattered a crowded marketplace in the heart of Baghdad, triggering secondary explosions, engulfing an eight-story building in flames and killing at least 78 people in the latest in a series of similar attacks aimed at the country's Shiite majority.
PHOTOS: Multiple explosions rock Baghdad The blasts in three parked cars Monday obliterated shops and stalls and left bodies scattered among mannequins and other debris in pools of blood. Dense smoke blackened the area and rose hundreds of feet from the market district on the east bank of the Tigris River. Small fires, fueled by clothing and other goods, burned for hours in the rubble-strewn street as firefighters battled blazes in two buildings. "Where is the government? Monday's bombings wrecked the Shorja market, Baghdad's oldest, a day after joint U.S. and Iraqi forces temporarily sealed an adjacent neighborhood.
Super Long, But worth reading. (First Post. Depression's Evolutionary Roots. Depression seems to pose an evolutionary paradox.
Research in the US and other countries estimates that between 30 to 50 percent of people have met current psychiatric diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder sometime in their lives. But the brain plays crucial roles in promoting survival and reproduction, so the pressures of evolution should have left our brains resistant to such high rates of malfunction. Mental disorders should generally be rare — why isn’t depression? This paradox could be resolved if depression were a problem of growing old. The functioning of all body systems and organs, including the brain, tends to deteriorate with age.
Science. Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? Ten games that make you think about life. At the start of this year, we decided to come up with a list of Flash casual games with a philosophical bent.
To be honest, we struggled. After days of research, we could only find a handful of games that had the thought-provoking depth we were looking for. Our list (which you can view by clicking here) was therefore only five games long. Fast forward to now, and it is remarkable how much difference a few months can make. Thanks to the work of pioneers like Daniel Benmergui, Gregory Weir and PixelAnte, there is now an abundance of clever arty Flash games to pique our intellects, and as a result creating this follow-up list of games that make you think has been a doddle.
In a wonderful twist, it seems it is the Flash gaming space - until now known more for the throwaway nature of its games rather than depth - that is leading the way in this exciting new area of gaming, as we hope the following games prove. 1Immortall The game starts with you crash landing on a planet. In the Running. Miner's "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"
Temporal paradox. Temporal paradox (also known as time paradox and time travel paradox) is a theoretical paradoxical situation that happens because of time travel.
A time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he does not do anything that would prevent his traveling to the past, so time travel would be possible for him. However, if he goes back in time and does something that would cause him/her to not make a time machine he would not travel back in the first place causing him to make one then go back and not make one. A typical example of this kind is the grandfather paradox, where a person goes back in time to kill his grandfather before he had any biological descendant. If they succeed, one of their parents would never exist and they themselves would never exist either. Solution[edit] Novikov self-consistency principle[edit] Multiple universes hypothesis[edit] Branching universe hypothesis[edit]