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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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Exposing political corruption and championing feminism
Toddlers in tiaras are so passe. Poodle pageants are this season's hot new reality phenom. Extreme Poodles premiered on TLC yesterday. This is no ordinary dog show. We're talking poodle topiary. Groomers use clippers, dye, and even glue to sculpt the poor creatures into living "art." Meet boa ...
Today I review Deborah Rhode's excellent book, "The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Work" (Oxford University Press, 2010) for Working In These Times. Here are a few additional thoughts I had on "The Beauty Bias": Rhode, a Stanford law professor, argues that appearance ...
UCB Comedy shows what happens when someone upends a cup of joe at BP HQ. Photo credit: Flickr user TN Something Special Cakes, licensed under Creative Commons.
A 22-year-old U.S. intelligence analyst has been arrested for allegedly giving classified combat footage of a U.S. helicopter crew killing civilians to Wikileaks, an online repository of leaked documents. The footage made international headlines because it appeared to show a helicopter crew ...
As a shock jock radio DJ, Glenn Beck called his rival's wife to make fun of her recent miscarriage on the air. It's that humanistic spirit that suffuses Beck's broadcasting career to this day--whether he's ridiculing 11-year-old Malia Obama, stoking paranoia about "czars," shilling for gold ...
God bless whistleblowers. Graham Rayman and the Village Voice obtained hundreds of hours of covertly recorded audio from one disgruntled Bed-Stuy cop: Two years ago, a police officer in a Brooklyn precinct became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his ...
Charlie Riedel of the Associated Press deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the oil-slicked pelicans of the Louisiana coast. It would be an unconventional choice. Human subjects have consistently hogged the spotlight in Breaking News Photography and Feature Photography. These aren't just ...
As advice columnists go, Emiy Yoffe of "Dear Prudence" is usually relatively compassionate. Today, however, Prudie was shockingly cruel to a young woman* grieving the loss of her best friend: Dear Prudence, I am in my mid-20s, and my best friend and I were very close. At the start of this ...
Early Monday morning Israeli commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the deck of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship bearing tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza. There were about 700 passengers aboard the ship at the time. Some of the passengers resisted the onslaught with knives and clubs. In the end ...
The chief rabbi of a West Bank settlement decreed that women are ineligible to run for municipal office because women should only be heard through their husbands: The chief rabbi of a West Bank settlement has prohibited women from standing in a local community election. Rabbi Elyakim ...
A pair of Canadian paleontologists say that anigmatic fossilized organism called Nectocaris pteryx (literally "swimming crab with wings") was the great-grandmammy of the modern-day squid, octopus, and cuttlefish: In the Canadian Rockies, a horde of 91 squid-like animals have risen from the ...
A doctor who touched off a worldwide panic over an alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been barred from practicing medicine over unethical research practices. Britain's General Medical Council struck Wakefield from the medical register on Monday, a sanction analogous to disbarring a ...
Rebecca Mead's New Yorker profile of conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart repeats the false claim that his protege, provocateur videographer James O'Keefe, impersonated a pimp to infiltrate the offices of the anti-poverty, pro-voter registration group ACORN. Here's how Mead describes ...
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed By John Valliant Knopf Canada (2005) I picked up a copy of John Valliant's "The Golden Spruce" in a gift shop on BC ferry last week, the woman next to me said "It's wonderful, you have to get it." I'd never heard of the ...
An apostate pastry chef who swore off sweets to become a Food Network diet guru has been charged with attempting to bribe homeless men to murder his wife with a box cutter. Sources close to Juan-Carlos Cruz and his wife Jennifer Campbell speculate that he was trying to do her a favor. Campbell ...