Lots of Random Articles

• What came before the big bang? - "There was no such epoch as “before the big bang,” because time began with the big bang, says physicist and astrobiologist Paul Davies."
• The Real Origins of the Religious Right - "One of the most durable myths in recent history is that the religious right, the coalition of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists, emerged as a political movement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion...But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools."
• NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar
• The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship - "Successful entrepreneurs achieve hero status in our culture. We idolize the Mark Zuckerbergs and the Elon Musks. And we celebrate the blazingly fast growth of the Inc. 500 companies. But many of those entrepreneurs, like Smith, harbor secret demons: Before they made it big, they struggled through moments of near-debilitating anxiety and despair—times when it seemed everything might crumble."
• Why Do People Persist in Believing Things That Just Aren't True?
• How Brandeis foreshadowed Snowden and Greenwald - "In the famous wiretapping case Olmstead v. United States, argued before the Supreme Court in 1928, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote one of the most influential dissenting opinions in the history of American jurisprudence. Those who are currently engaged in what might be called the Establishment counterattack against Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, including the eminent liberal journalists Michael Kinsley and George Packer, might benefit from giving it a close reading and a good, long think."
• Final Word on U.S. Law Isn’t: Supreme Court Keeps Editing - "The Supreme Court has been quietly revising its decisions years after they were issued, altering the law of the land without public notice. The revisions include “truly substantive changes in factual statements and legal reasoning,” said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard and the author of a new study examining the phenomenon."
• The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits - "From ‘Donkey Kong’ to the NES — how a Japanese company took over the American living room. An exclusive first serial from ‘Console Wars.’"
• Finding the Next Lost: What Is an “Operational Theme” and Why Don’t I Have One?