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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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I don’t know if the old man was having us on, but he said he was a funerary historian, researching the Père Lachaise cemetery in the same streaming rain that was washing away the lipstick traces off the Oscar Wilde monument and chilling us to the bone. “That little temple,” he said of a ...
Ask any observer of American politics today to name the most influential figures of the religious right, and some familiar names are likely to come up - Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, John Hagee, Tony Perkins, Roy Moore, and others. But one name that's not as likely to appear is Francis ...
With the global financial markets in turmoil, this year's World Economic Forum event in Switzerland couldn't have come at a better time. Look for global leaders to give us an idea of what's on tap over the next 12 months. The event kicks off tomorrow (January 23) with a mega-brainstorming session ...
A common argument made by religious apologists is that atheism is unreasonable because, to exclude the possibility of God, a person would have to have total knowledge of all that exists in the universe. Otherwise, we might overlook a deity hiding in one of the gaps in our knowledge. As one ...
The above video is IBM's tongue-in-cheek look at corporate brainstorming events. This 0:30 ad has been played over and over during each week of the NFL playoffs as IBM reminds managers all over the country to just do it when they get back into the office on Monday. [video: IBM Commercial ...
I have to admit, I cringe when I read quotes like this: Max may be a long way from his old home, but he plans on going a lot further than America. Extropianism is a "rational transhumanism", he explains. There may not be any supernatural force in the universe, but pretty soon, suggests More ...
Take that, Harry Beck. Try as you might, the lines on your Tube map could never be as straight as this. Beck schematised a transportation system that was completely irregularly laid out to begin with. This map, however, shows how planning ahead would enable not just symmetry, but also better ...
In Christian theology, God is presented as the omnipotent creator, able to bring about literally any world it is possible to imagine. His power has no limits, he never suffers from weakness or fatigue, and he possesses the omniscient knowledge necessary to shape the world according to his ...
I've written in the past that atheists and freethinkers, if we ever want to truly compete with religion on its own terms, have to create a secular community that offers the same kind of social support network which believers are accustomed to finding in church. I hope we can put that principle into ...
The 1-800-CEO-READ blog has become one of my favorite go-to destinations for learning about the best new business books. Yesterday, the blog posted a review of the Best Business Books of 2007, arranged by category: "The day has finally arrived. After careful consideration, the winners have ...
In the last few days, both Ed Brayton and Glenn Greenwald have written about the story of Ezra Levant, a Canadian conservative who's currently under investigation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. Levant's "crime" was republishing the Mohammed cartoons first printed in 2005 in the Danish ...
The Washington State Tri-City Herald ran a lovely story last month profiling a local atheist: Atheism - A belief in the here and now. Fernando Aguilar, the story's subject, is the kind of person every atheist should strive to be like: a dedicated and courageous humanitarian, an outspoken activist ...
Today's edition of Poetry Sunday introduces another freethinking poet, the American A.R. Ammons. Born in North Carolina in 1926, Ammons grew up on his family's farm during the Great Depression and attended a Pentecostal church, whose hellfire sermons terrified the young man. He first began to write ...
(Author's Note: The following review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.) Summary: Not "essential" as its title claims, but a usefully broad sampling of atheist thought for the reader who wishes to be better versed in the voices of nonbelief. ...
The pessimist mourns the glass’s half-emptiness, the optimist rejoices that it’s semi-full and the engineer just thinks the glass is twice the size it should be. I wonder what a space engineer would think of this map of Mars, half underwater. Although the latest scientific evidence seems to ...