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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
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The transfer of a dominant language to other people through military, economic or cultural power
What's the Latest Development? Citizens in rural Nepal, Cambodia, and nine other Asian countries have greater-than-ever access to the Internet and all its benefits, thanks to the efforts of the PAN Localization Program, also known as PANL10n. Since 2003, this group of software engineers ...
I won't propose an answer to this hugely complex question today. Instead, I want to point out some striking similarities between the American perspective on the conflict in Chechnya a decade ago and the run-up to the Obama administration’s pending decision on how to handle the Assad regime’s ...
Now that the two suspects Monday’s horrific bombing have been identified, attention turns to their motive. Why would two brothers originally from the troubled region of Chechnya, a republic of Russia, detonate bombs in Boston on Patriot's Day? Here is a very raw, very quick, very preliminary ...
He billed his first presidential visit to Israel as a listening tour, but it turns out Barack Obama is doing quite a bit of speaking as well. On his first day in the Holy Land, the president was all about the love: I know that in stepping foot on this land, I walk with you on the historic ...
The student center at Brooklyn College will be abuzz Thursday evening at 6:30 when two speakers propose boycotting, divesting and applying sanctions on Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. The run-up to the panel discussion has ignited a huge flap between supporters and opponents of Israel ...
What's the Latest Development? In bilingual societies, people frequently switch between languages, particularly in emotional situations. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Bard College say that such code-switching is a strategy to express emotions differently ...
Struggling with a foreign language is practically the definition of mental strain: what is the word for "screwdriver" again? did I produce that "ĥ" sound correctly? are they laughing with me or at me? And mental strain, according to post-rational theories of the mind, has consequences for how we ...
What’s the Big Idea? Pop quiz! Bilingualism is: a. A competitive advantage on college and job applications. b. Best acquired before the age of six. c. One area in which Americans are kind of lame. d. Full of surprising ancillary neurocognitive benefits if acquired early. Bilingual ...