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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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Theory & political commentary
It stands to reason that conservative parents would be more inclined to propagate the Santa myth, and not only because they tend to be more religious than liberals. Deception for noble motives has deep roots in conservative political philosophy. It was another era and a vastly different context ...
Like many of you, I am on vacation this week. For most Americans, Christmas week represents about half of the time off we will enjoy all year long. Compared with Australians (at least 4 weeks off, plus 10 public holidays), Brazilians (22 days of paid leave with a 33 percent salary vacation bonus ...
Note: This post is long. Click here to see the entire essay in a single page. The preacher in Ecclesiastes was wrong: as we approach the end of 2012, there is something new under the sun, or at least something new on the horizon. In 2013, with two cases to be argued and decided by the Supreme ...
While the horrific shooting of schoolchildren and their teachers was taking place inside the classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday morning, my students and I were discussing the final chapters of St. Augustine’s Confessions. Here is one of the passages we paused over from Book XIII ...
Now that Pope Benedict XVI has joined the Twitterverse, we will see how the pontiff wields the power of 140 characters. Early signs are only moderately encouraging. Before he started tweeting this afternoon, the Pope communicated with his flock primarily through encyclicals and messages ...
Let’s say you’re just now tuning in to reports that the world will end on December 21 when the Mayan calendar resets to zero. Maybe you’re one of the 35 million Americans who fear it will really happen. Maybe the prospect of solar storms, rogue planets and devastating floods is a welcome ...
This afternoon, the Supreme Court agreed to hear argument in two same-sex marriage cases: a challenge to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to overturn Proposition 8 and a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). This is the first time the Supreme Court will consider ...
Last week, Praxis guest blogger Zane Friedkin drew on principles of Kantian ethics to build a case against the Obama administration’s drone campaign in the Middle East and North Africa. I agree that Kant can help guide the debate, and I too have serious misgivings about the recent escalation of ...
As our leaders in Washington, D.C., hurtle closer and closer to the fiscal precipice, it’s worth reminding ourselves of how a friendly game of “chicken” can end. This is what happened to a British schoolgirl last week: A 13-year-old girl died after being hit by a tram while allegedly playing ...
By Zane Friedkin (guest blogger) The drone war being waged by the Obama administration in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia has elicited more media attention than is typical of equally destructive U.S. foreign policy programs, more often than not ignored in the major domestic ...
Dear Representative Boehner, Earlier this month, after President Obama was re-elected, you assured America in an interview that you are the "most reasonable, responsible person here in Washington.” No one wants to hurtle over the “fiscal cliff” in January, even if it is just a “fiscal slope,” and ...
In his recent post, fellow Big Think blogger Adam Lee blames the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict on competing religious fundamentalisms. The recent renewal of fighting on the Gaza border, he writes, is being inflamed and prolonged by religious zealotry on both sides. Whether it's ...
It reads like a headline in The Onion: “Study Finds People Prefer Having Sex to Scrubbing the Toilet.” Throw in an ironic moniker (the author of the happiness study is named Carsten Grimm) and it’s really too good to be true. Except this is for real. It is the latest, and by my lights the most ...
Down in the dumps? You’d better watch your wallet, among other things. We all face dozens of choices every day between instant gratification and delayed rewards, perhaps too often opting for the immediate pleasure. But as Harvard University researcher Jennifer Lerner and two colleagues report in ...
Over at The Stone, Christy Wampole diagnoses the malaise of the post-millennial age and suggests a few ways “How to Live Without Irony.” It is a sign of Wampole’s misdiagnosis that her recommended cures sound a lot worse than the disease. First, the claim: For many Americans born in the ...