On this week’s episodes of The Axiom Amnesia Theory, we’ve talked extensively about not allowing yourself to be an unhelpful bystander to injustices affecting your fellow humans. On this episode, Heit & Cheri focus on the more philosophical aspects of giving, receiving, and doing nothing. Is it really better to give than to receive? Is [...]

Eating donkeys doesn’t make you a jackass, but a lot of other things can turn you into one. The abbreviated list of things that can make you a jackass include being a Black president (but saying you’re not the president of Black people) and telling folks to take off their bedroom slippers, murdering an unarmed [...]

Are you versed in the “art of philosophical piracy”? What we morally should and shouldn’t do or legally can and cannot do is based on our philosophical disposition. The accusation of piracy–or robbing parties of that which does not belong to you–must be weighed against a discussion about what things are actually subject to the [...]

How many sides are there to a story, and is there such a thing as a universal truth? Our perception IS our reality, and that can differ from person to person. With this being the case, how do we determine what’s the truth? On this episode of The Axiom Amnesia Theory, Heit & Cheri embark [...]

At this point in the evolution of technology, have you ever stopped to ask, “What’s that in your body?” With the advent of a pill or device that’s claimed to fix just about anything, it makes sense to question whether these things are really good for us. On this episode of The Axiom Amnesia Theory, [...]

Having the ability to read and write opens a world of possibilities. Not only is it vital to our ability to communicate, it makes learning a more independent process, which in turn can lead to more intellectual independence as well. I read an article about Afghan women who were using cell phones to learn to [...]

How shall we educate the masses? Surely this is a question pondered by the wealthy elites–how best to create and maintain a system of indoctrination and preparation for the human workforce. In this episode of The Axiom Amnesia Theory, Heit & Cheri challenge you to think differently about the way you view education and learning. [...]

Rap freestyles can be profound or completely nonsensical. The challenge, however, is knowing the difference. Entertainers have become quite adept at sounding profound, while pushing content with very little substance. On this musical episode of The Axiom Amnesia Theory, Heit & Cheri explore the diversity of freestyling celebrities via their commentary and analysis of songs [...]

Due to the number of times it revolves around the earth per 24-hour period, astronauts at the International Space Station see 15 sunrises and sunsets per “day”. In the spring of 2015, the ISS team will leave American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko at the space station for an entire year! One [...]

Okay, we know that our readers are among the most intelligent people around, so we’re asking for your help. Thanks to Heit’s excellent filming skills, we were able to capture video of some railroad equipment making its way down the track kicking up lots of dust. We weren’t close enough to see exactly what it [...]

New York’s “Stop & Frisk” policy is such an egregious violation of human rights that we wonder how the policy could have ever been deemed acceptable, let alone legal in the first place. Furthermore, what’s the best way to put an end to stop & frisk? There have already been marches, rallies, protests, and an [...]

A few months ago we came across a video that detailed an experiment in which monkeys and other animals were shown to completely reject unequal pay. Check out the video below. On the surface it’s kind of funny to watch the monkey throw the food (pay) back into the face of the scientist (employer). When [...]

Are you hungry for justice yet find that it’s a state far too often uninhabited? The quest to make things right can leave you feeling empty-handed, but don’t give up. Be willing to fight for what you think will balance the scales of justice. The first place that many of us encounter the notion of [...]

Summary “It’s impossible not to remember the bombshell Forum press conference that autumn Thursday, and, like the JFK assassination or Challenger explosion, where we were when we heard it. “The Announcement” shows what happened behind the scenes: how Johnson learned of his illness, the anxiety over telling family and teammates and the fallout that occurred [...]

Summary Jacques Ellul was a French theologian/sociologist and anarchist. He first became well-known to American readers when his book The Technological Society was published in English in 1964. This book leveled a broad critique of technique, a term that means more than gadgets and machines – as the English word technology means. For Ellul, technique [...]

In a bold move, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is taking Barack Obama’s campaign messages to the streets in September, specifically to several hundred Back church leaders (members of the Conference of National Black Churches) who represent about 10 million congregants. Holder is heading up a team, including the IRS, the Congressional Black Caucus, and [...]

Get ready for additional invasions of your privacy across the country and beyond! Since 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working on new and even more intrusive methods of crime detection as part of their Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) project. Basically, they plan to stand around in airports and monitor [...]

In a few hours, an annular solar eclipse will hit the western portion of the United States! More than 80 percent of sun will be blocked as the moon passes between the earth and the sun. Unfortunately, if you live east of the Mississippi River, you won’t be able to see the eclipse in person, [...]

Summary A high school teacher’s unusual experiment to demonstrate to his students what life is like under a dictatorship spins horribly out of control when he forms a social unit with a life of its own. This is a foreign film, originally in German, but it has English subtitles. To access the subtitles, you may [...]

Summary Is there more than one universe? In this visually rich, action-packed TED talk, Brian Greene shows how the unanswered questions of physics (starting with a big one: What caused the Big Bang?) have led to the theory that our own universe is just one of many in the “multiverse.” At the heart of modern [...]

The Obama campaign recently introduced a web tool, Julia, which capitalizes on the so-called war on women currently raging in the United States. Users are introduced to Julia at age three, and are allowed to cycle through images and text at various ages in her development and adulthood. The goal is to allow people to [...]

Summary The Green Apple. David Owen, a writer for The New Yorker, discusses the complex issues of sustainability as they relate to urban and suburban life. Green Manhattan, an article that Owen wrote for The New Yorker about the city’s inherent sustainability, was a major inspiration for the e² series. Green for All. Learn more [...]

Summary “I am dying. … There is no sense in trying to deny that fact,” 59-year-old Craig Ewert says of his rapid deterioration just months after being diagnosed with ALS, a motor neuron disorder often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. “I’m not tired of living,” explains Ewert, a retired computer science professor. “I’m tired [...]

Inevitably, when news of any sort of outbreak or potential contamination of the food supply occurs, the first thing the government tries to do is maintain calm among the masses–even if they have to lie to do it. When we first learned that a U.S. cow had tested positive for mad cow disease, the government [...]

Summary Marijuana: A Second Class Addiction (MASCA) sets out to investigate the popular misconception that marijuana is a non-addictive, non habit forming substance. Despite the fact that it is illegal, the ever-growing debate over whether marijuana should be legalized always tends to graze over one of the very fundamental questions of such a proposal – [...]

We’re all about looking good and peacocking instead of being practical. We’re about beautification over application. The idea of planting a garden on top of the roofs of vehicles and buildings is an excellent idea, but it makes more sense to grow things that are useful to us–rather than cultivating things that have little value [...]

Summary Is the US contributing to the militarization of cyberspace? Cyberwar. A conflict without foot soldiers, guns, or missiles. Instead the attacks are launched by computer hackers. Digital spy rings. Information thieves. Cyberarmies of kids, criminals, terrorists – some backed by nation states. But is cyber war really a threat? Can cyber war actually cripple [...]

This morning a solar storm estimated as moderate to strong is set to hit the Earth at about 9:00 A.M Eastern Standard Time. How could this possibly affect you? The solar flare released Sunday night could knock out satellites, cause blackouts, and force aircraft to avoid polar routes. One of the most beautiful possibilities is [...]

Summary One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power thirty years later. Elliott divided her [...]

Summary In the early 1970s, Craig Haney, Curt Banks, Carlo Prescott, and Philip Zimbardo conducted a landmark situational study at Stanford University. The experiment tested the fundamental attribution error: our tendency to attribute causes of behavior to personal factors, underestimating the influence of situational conditions. For this study, a small group of college students volunteered [...]