“Paranoia’s the garlic in life’s kitchen,” remarks the central character, Maxine Tarnow, of Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge. “You can never have too much.” Pynchon seasons his latest epic […]
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Peter Ward: Not going extinct doesn’t mean you’re not going to be miserable, and by misery I mean, wholesale, enormous human mortality.
Peter Ward: I’ve got a 12-year old son. The only way to get to him is a video game. That’s what he wants to do all the time.
I just read an alarming piece on what the world will look like, possibly soon, when the efficacy of our current arsenal of antibiotics really starts to fade. There […]
What’s the difference between a physician and a surgeon? If you were sick in the Middle Ages you had three options: the church, the local healer, and the physician. A […]
To condemn the riots that rocked Belfast last Friday as “shameful”, as the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers has done, fails to address the two conflicting […]
Ever feel sorry for a sidewalk sparrow with a cigarette butt in its beak? Did you sigh in wistful sadness at seeing nature’s beauty polluted by human industry, which turns […]
Of the 303 million people living in the United States, half or so are registered to vote. It’s rather impressive to think that a good proportion of the 150 million […]
In my earlier post about whether to vote for third parties, there were some commenters who asserted that there’s no good reason to vote at all. Since we’re now right […]
A few years ago, at mile 20 of my second marathon, I promised myself I would never again run a 26.2 mile race. I had trained impeccably, ran my first […]
Museums around the world are threatened by lots of things today, but usually the mafia isn’t included in that long list. The Contemporary Art Museum of Casoria (CAM, for short), […]
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Daniel Junge shined a spotlight on Pakistani women who endured the physical and emotional pain of acid attacks in the documentary Saving Face. The filmmakers followed Dr. […]
If you are in the throes of a metaphysical hangover, we offer you the cure: a whimper over the Mayan prophecy of apocalypse in the year 2012, followed by a shattering meditation upon the various ways the world might end.
It's well known that New York City (and the Indian Point Nuclear Power plant) sits on fault lines, making an earthquake entirely possible. A geological paper says that the eastern seaboard might need to worry about tsunamis as well.
My mother had always been a suspicious and secretive person, but it wasn’t until I was 14 that she really went nuts—with many of the same symptoms described in Rachel […]
If you haven’t read the popular non-fiction book Freakonomics, I highly recommend it. Or, if it’s more your speed, you can visit the website associated with the book. The authors […]
It only has one job: instil map readers with fear and revulsion.
In the next five years, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the United States will have to spend more than one trillion dollars simply to sustain what we already have.
When the decision-makers at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery decided to drop David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from their exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American […]
A limited-edition map celebrated the coincidence of a patriotic occation with a pig-centric one.
Every time I see a row of seaside lampposts, each with a single seagull perched on it, I wonder: Do those birds think we built the highway system for them? […]
Well, after sorting through all of the Leadership Day 2010 posts, tracking down incorrect URLs, deleting a few nonexistent items, and reviewing some attempts to recycle old posts, I believe […]
In Big Think's series "How to Write Great Fiction," 12 celebrated authors give writing tips. Now see how well you know each writer's work and style.
Having now closed out the first six months of the year, it seems like a good time to look back on Big Think’s 10 Most Popular Videos of the First […]
n n (click on the image for a larger version) n ‘Everybody Is Against Everybody – Somebody Has To Be For Them’: the message behind this Amnesty International poster is […]
Instead of reacting to the Sunday morning political shows, I figured I’d beat them to the punch. “Cheney’s Katrina” has a nice ring to it. All the guests seem to […]
"Why do males of some species attend to their offspring prolongedly, while others tend to spring off post-coitally?" asks Natalie Angier. The answer may relate to the varying social role of infants.
After a series of snubs, Europe is suddenly getting a bunch of positive attention from the US. What happened? Maybe Washington is impressed that, after a prolonged struggle to deal […]
The lower manufacturing output associated with the recession has had a tiny curbing effect on global CO2 emissions, buying us a tiny amount of extra time in which to address the climate […]
The US goes by the motto In God We Trust (but only since 1956, when it replaced the ‘unofficial’ motto, E pluribus unum). A motto (from the Italian word for […]