BICEP2 scientist Brian Keating’s new book is honest and insightful, but just as notable for what it fails to recognize. Imagine what it’s like to be a scientist working on […]
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An incredible live-blog of an incredible event. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new […]
No matter how great your expertise, new discoveries await for the curious. “There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and […]
What every middle-to-high schooler should know. Image credit: Bayside STEM academy, via Stanford at https://ed.stanford.edu/news/new-design-thinking-curriculum-targets-middle-school-students. “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time […]
What is Punk? Punk isn’t about mohawks or studded leather, says Henry Rollins – it’s about resistance to tyranny in any form. How Art Can Change Society, with Sarah Lewis Sarah […]
And if not, how do you reason with those who believe they are? “Ignorance is hardly unusual, Miss Davar. The longer I live, the more I come to realize that […]
“Where nursed by pure love, grow the fairest flowers,” wrote France Prešeren, Slovenia’s national poet, a romantic figure whose work inspired generations of European artists. It wasn’t just his musical […]
Andreas Schleicher, the Acting Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), on how education can help students meet the challenges of today.
As teachers begin using new and questionable methods, will students suffer and get left behind? “Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.”–Dan Quayle As the first full […]
Your first philosophers: Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, and one strange new face. Why the first books people read about Stoicism should be by one of these guys. On Stoicism Graduation season […]
Do you know what a “tiger mom” is? Does the phrase “the tipping point” immediately bring Malcolm Gladwell to mind? “Idea entrepreneurs,” argues John Butman, are a new and influential breed, driven primarily by passion for an idea and the desire to spread it.
There is nothing more mind-numbing than reading in someone’s bio or profile a list of things they are “passionate” about, in a sentence that goes: “I am passionate about x, […]
The most terrifying thing I've ever seen was not produced by Wes Craven or found in a theme park, it's what I see some people do to themselves to lose weight. Take a look at these SEVEN scary diets . . . but reader beware if you're easily grossed-out!
Big Think Mentor connects world-class mentors with a global community of smart, driven users to teach the habits of mind and people skills we need to live happier, healthier, more productive lives.
A Berkeley physics discussion group asked "the late night big questions of quantum theory" which served to refocus the field of quantum physics.
Capitalist societies believe in the possibility of endless growth. But Plato and other classical philosophers would have begged to differ.
Funny thing about fear. By the time you feel it, your body is already quite busy keeping you safe.
[cross-posted at E-Learning Journeys] Change is a process in a school. Change is neither good nor bad but just is. Rapid change can cause discomfort and upset. No change can […]
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth).
Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay.
Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.
This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]
This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]