Blogs
Sort by:
The View From Europe
November 21, 2009 — 1:10 AM
The New European Union: Off To An Abysmal Start
In yet another baffling sequence of events, European heads of state have chosen two no-name leaders for the Union's top positions. Read More
Politeia
November 20, 2009 — 5:08 PM
For the first time, according to Gallup's latest tracking poll, less than fifty percent of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as President. That's down from 60% in July. As Greg Sargent says, this just confirms what Quinnipiac and Fox polls showed earlier in the week. And Obama's approval ratings have been hovering just over 50% for a while now. While there is nothing magic about the 50% threshold, it is a sign that the bloom is off Obama's political rose just ten months into his presidency. Read More
Mind Matters
November 20, 2009 — 12:42 PM
One More Reason to Skip Dessert
Creepiest incentive ever to exercise: Peruvian cops have arrested a gang that, they say, kills people for their fat. Read More
The Voice of Big Think
November 20, 2009 — 9:54 AM
"You Better Not Cry" author Augusten Burroughs treats fans to a second Big Think interview this week, just in time for the holiday season. Famous since his 2001 bestseller "Running With Scissors" as a memoirist of the humorous, painful, and bizarre, Burroughs shares his view of Christmas as an essentially tragic holiday with a tiny nougat of joy inside the bitter candy coating. Read More
Novel Copy
November 19, 2009 — 5:03 PM
The Guardian says it’s a bad idea for the the Times of London to build a paywall by next spring. Spectator Magazine (UK) only lost 3% of readers after putting its content behind a paywall, but realize they serve a more niche audience than general newspapers. Still, a survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that many are willing to pay for access to online news. Plus, the Literary Review 2009 bad-sex-in-fiction prize has chosen its nominees. You’ll be hard up to find more titillating entertainment (or not). Read More
Brave Green World
November 19, 2009 — 4:01 PM
If RFK Jr. Gave Birth Today, His Child Would Have Diminished IQ: The Link Between Coal And Mercury
“Would you please turn the lights up,” Robert F Kennedy Jr. asked the stage crew as he took the floor of New York’s Town Hall in Times Square, about to deliver an environmental lecture to a roaring full house this Tuesday. “I want to be able to see if people are leaving.” It was a joke, just the first of many for the evening, but the fact is that RFK, America’s most prominent environmental lawyer, Chief Prosecuting Attorney for Riverkeeper and Chairman of Waterkeeper Alliance, does have a hawk eye on us all—on polluters, on lobbyists, on fake think tanks funded by oil and coal, on corporations, on Jane and Joe Shmoe, and on the government. Read More
Trend World
November 19, 2009 — 10:11 AM
Men’s Underwear Shows Us the Economy is Rebounding
When it comes to gauging exactly how the economy is faring, the long-held method has been to look towards the bare necessities. Turns out they don’t get much more bare than underwear. A theory first expressed in the spring when the economy was truly spiraling, the recent expansion of the men’s underwear industry could be telling us that the economy is on its way back. Read More
Global Pedestrian
November 19, 2009 — 1:28 AM
The new Atlantic magazine has an intriguing dispatch about how "Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops—and often sex and schnapps and heroin." Their destination -- the Azerbaijani town of Astara -- amounts to "the Tijuana of the Caspian," according to journalist Peter Savodnik, who wrote the piece. Read More
Undiplomatic
November 18, 2009 — 9:11 PM
Iran and Russia Rethinking Their Relationship
It looks like the Iranians have balked on their promise to ship lowly enriched uranium to Russia. One wonders if the whole thing was a ruse to tamp down the criticism that followed Pittsburgh (when it was revealed Iran was operating a secret nuclear facility)—if in fact they never had any intention of letting the Russians enrich their uranium in the first place. After all, a similar proposal was tabled a few years back, and the Iranians scoffed at it then, too. Are Iranian-Russian relations heading south? Read More