"How do we understand what words really mean? New science suggests we make meaning by creating mental simulations.
Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.

Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding."

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"Tina Brown, the founder of the Daily Beast and editor of Newsweek, announced this week that the print magazine was headed to the morgue file, dead after nearly 80 years. A digital offering called Newsweek Global will take its place. Those of us who worked at Newsweek through the turn of the century wish the new venture well, but we can't escape the feeling that there's been a death in the family.


Until the Washington Post Co. sold the magazine in 2010, I qualified as a "lifer," a concept that no longer exists in the American workplace. Over nearly three decades at Newsweek in the pre-tweet era, I was the magazine's media critic and later a columnist. I interviewed and wrote about five American presidents and authored more than 50 stories, almost all of them on domestic affairs."

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