Universities are like a utopia in a way, because you're mentally stimulated, you're challenged, and you have a lot of young, creative minds wanting to do new things, different things. Better things.
Public enthusiasm for new advances is a key ingredient in influencing policy-makers to stimulate follow-up work with suitable funding, and it can be achieved far faster now that interested non-specialists can explore new research autonomously and can also be appealed to directly by scientists.
For policy makers interested in using tax policy to stimulate investments or especially to smooth business cycle fluctuations, the results are not promising.
I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.
The creative part of your brain needs to be stimulated. Sometimes you get blocked in the thing you do, because there's so much pressure to do it.
I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others.
It's going to be difficult to stimulate the real economy in the U.S. at a faster rate than 2 percent and perhaps even less if we have that fiscal cliff in December or January 2013.
But investment in space stimulates society, it stimulates it economically, it stimulates it intellectually, and it gives us all passion.
As a former high school teacher and a student in a class of 60 urchins at St. Brigid's grammar school, I know that education is all about discipline and motivation. Disadvantaged students need extra attention, a stable school environment, and enough teacher creativity to stimulate their imaginations. Those things are not expensive.
I'm easily frightened, and I've also come to realize that old Catholic guilt or remorse is easily stimulated.
