Humanity

Unlike my favorite literary greats (Orwell, Huxley, Shteyngart, Atwood, H.G. Wells and Murakami to name a few), I have little confidence in predicting humanity’s future overall. As a long-time Asia-watcher with fairly strong training in socioeconomics, I am a tad more assured that my insights on opportunities and challenges East of the prime meridian will be worth a bit more than night soil (although an increase in biogas plants puts this assurance at great risk). Hence, in the Year of the Dragon, here are eight things you should know:

Pirates are awesome. Economics: also awesome. The combination?

A recent report uses data from 1500 Somalian pirates to look at the future of international piracy. The conclusion? Incidents of piracy are on the rise.

Living in the USA is killing people, quite early. Prodigious wealth and scientific achievement isn’t keeping Americans around very long. Quite the opposite. Longevity rankings tabulated by the United Nations show the North American behemoth wheezing behind in 36th place, with a croak-time of 78.3 years, dying nearly four years earlier than the durable Japanese (82.6). Cubans live as long as Americans; Chileans and Costa Ricans live longer; so do workaholic South Koreans (2,357 person-hours) and hard-drinking Finland, where alcoholism is the #1 cause of death.

Humanity’s advances to date have been accompanied by great leaps in the density, diversity, and virtuality of our societies, and in the miniaturization and efficiency of our technologies. Among these and other variables determining social progress, two stand out as particularly special.

After posting a few weeks back on a Richard Dawkins article specific to Jesus and Atheism, I was responded by Lincoln Cannon a post called the New God Argument. I first heard this argument at the University of Utah from Lincoln while visiting the area for a conference.

American atheists are elevating their presence in activism and charitable giving. Here's the evidence:

Almost any teacher will agree that technology is changing how students learn, but is it changing how student think?