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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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Odds and Ends. Mostly Odds.
Like many urban rivers, the South Platte in Denver is not always easy to get to. City officials have done a fair job of creating walking and biking paths along the river’s shores but much of it is still insulated and encased with railroad tracks, freeway interchanges, and industrial buildings. And ...
The Denver Green School, classed as an Innovation Status school by the Denver Public School system, is trying out yet another innovation – growing their own food and serving it to students in their cafeteria. Like everything in education, it’s a bit more complicated than it seems. A ...
In my anticipation to get out of town everything seems to take a little longer. A woman snags the last open pump at the gas station. An empty bucket of roofing tar in the middle of the road that probably fell off someone's truck slows traffic. The red lights take a little bit longer. Everyone ...
Texas Governor Rick Perry's August 6th prayer rally, The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis, has already garnered criticism for being a Christians-only affair that blurred the line between church and state and featured speakers with extreme beliefs far outside of the mainstream. One ...
Yesterday, Republican politician, conservative advocate and definitely not-a-witch Christine O'Donnell "walked out" on an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan. She was there to promote her new book, Troublemaker, when she took umbrage with a rather routine question about gay marriage, cut the ...
The release last week of a sonar scan showing an anomalous formation on the bottom of the Gulf of Bothnia between Sweden and Finland set off a storm of wild speculation as to what exactly the image means. Most of this speculation centered on the idea that this object (if it is an object or objects ...
Engineers from the University of Southampton built a drone aircraft from parts printed on a 3D laser printing machine. They entered each part's specifications and the machine printed out all the pieces by building up layers of plastic or metal until each part was complete. Then they took the parts ...
When Captain America was defrosted from a block of ice floating in the North Atlantic in Avengers #4 (1964), writer (and now national treasure) Stan Lee used an old idea to explain his preservation - suspended animation. This explanation worked fine because, (1) it was a comic book, and (2) nobody ...
His name was Dandon and he was a strange man even for 1812 Berlin. By day, he was a Professor of Languages at the University. He was competent and respected by both students and faculty members. But at night he was something quite different. After dark, Dandon adopted the ...
When I lived in Portland, Oregon, I spent many pleasant years renovating old houses. It’s a fine way for a semi-employed writer to remain semi-employed. One of the simple joys of this work is the discovery of odd things under the floorboards. Old newspapers, empty cans. I never found anything of ...
Nancy Grace and her HLN producers, desperate for new material now that a jury has returned a not guilty verdict in the murder trial of Casey Anthony, are exploring a variety of options to keep the show fresh and exciting. One of these options is sure to raise eyebrows - committing a murder of their ...
Pity the poor Fifth of July. Americans don't love it the way they love its neighbor, the loud and flag-bedazzled Fourth of July. The Fourth is hard to beat. A celebration of our Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776, the Fourth is filled with some of America ...
My friend Tom Wayne, co-owner of Prospero's Books in Kansas City, recently mentioned that he had come across the phrase "old school" in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, written and published serially from 1852-1853. Curious, I looked it up. Dickens actually uses the phrase four times ...
If the Eighties was the decade of greed, then the Seventies was the decade of Satan. Some would argue that Satan is always with us (you know who I’m talking about) but he sure was a lot more with us in the era that also produced bell bottoms, disco, and the Sweathogs. Come to think ...
I spend a lot of time hunting for cool stuff. Garage sales, estate sales, yard sales, antique stores, junk shops - you get the idea. I spend more time looking than I do finding but the thrill is in the hunt and sometimes the hunt itself is its own weird reward. Often while hunting I get a ...