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This past spring semester, American University hosted an event featuring Roger Pielke Jr., a Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder and author of The Climate Fix: What […]

BY JASON SILVA The Imaginary Foundation says “Great art expands the way we see—it uplifts the human spirit from the barbaric and thrusts it toward the numinous.” – An Interview […]

My brother Erik Nisbet, a professor at The Ohio State University, has a study out that casts important new light on how Americans reacted to the news of the death […]

In a recent essay posted online, NASA scientist James Hansen explains what he calls the “Easter Bunny” fantasy that we can adequately address climate change by providing subsidies for renewable […]

While groups may have been wise at the start of the experiment, as soon as individuals within the group became aware of others’ estimates and choices, the diversity of opinions plummeted.

Major scientific endeavors like space exploration require decades of planning and funding sources that can weather economic downturns. Will the results of the Google Lunar X Prize competition stand that assumption on its head?

More form Mark Seddon’s new book; ‘Standing for Something – Life in the Awkward Squad’, published this week, is available by buying the book http://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/Standing%20for%20Something/ March 2011: Perched in the offices of […]

Going public now allows Groupon to establish dominance against their competitors. They can encourage a perception from the public markets that LivingSocial et. al. are “Groupon Clones.”

While we consider the Internet to be fundamental to the flowering of democracy abroad, what about here in America? The Founding Fathers could never have imagined an Internet “Kill Switch” bill passing through the Congress, or the government-mandated seizure of domain names, or the decision of the government to selectively shut down certain parts of the Internet. They also could never have imagined Wiki-Leaks or Anonymous or LulzSec, and the limits to what type of information governments should have to divulge.

“Resist what resists in you,” the god Krishna tells heroic Arjuna in Peter Brook’s epic theatrical version of The Mahabharata. “Become yourself!” This is, as the experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe […]

One of the things that I find most frustrating is reading articles or comments on AQAP by people who have never bothered to actually read what the organization itself puts […]

School reform efforts across the country hang on the notion of annual teacher evaluations based heavily on student test scores. But if this process isn’t consistently accurate, it will get the wrong teachers fired and discourage talented people from entering the profession.

Actively pursuing happiness may not lead to an actual increase in happiness. In fact, it can do the opposite and make you less happy at the end of the day. 

In Milwaukee, the fourth-poorest city in America, educators have launched a “guerrilla classroom” initiative that transforms urban locations into impromptu classrooms for parents and children. Across Milwaukee, playgrounds, bus stops […]

“For sound mental health, the fundamental question is not whether a thought is negative or positive, but whether it is accurate.”

They live in a parallel society, a world apart, where they obey an alien law and pray to an alien God. Their liberal allies foolishly promote toleration and claim these […]

Buzz has been building about the possibility of that Sarah Palin will run for President after all. Palin announced on Thursday that she will launch a bus tour of key […]

Although Motuto is just a part of a bigger vision of Castle Rock Research’s President and CEO Gautam Rao, I find the service so fascinating in itself that I would […]

Looking forward to the end of the world requires a divorce not only from reality, but from the awe that our infinitesimal place within it inspires.  

People without a conscience don’t need to satisfy the drive to bond and can focus entirely on the drive to acquire, making them more likely to seek leadership positions.   Well the question becomes you know, do these people without conscience, let’s call them PWOC’s is a rather shorthand way for that.  Talking about them getting into leadership positions and they probably get into them out of all proportion to a percentage often population, we estimate they maybe 2% to 4% of the population are such people.  And we think they get into the leadership positions maybe 8% or 10% of the time, but you know, any percent is a mess because they can wreak havoc in exploiting other people.  They probably get there more than others because it’s the only thing they’re looking for in life. You know we got normal people ha

Don’t pick on the sprouts, and don’t even pick on Organic. The danger here is the way you and I perceive and respond to risk, a subconscious decision-making process that often works well, but which sometimes can create risks all by itself.

A positive outcome of global economic meltdown is that corporations are increasingly working together for social change, and many are harnessing social networks to do so.

We often lack the critical skills necessary to do the right thing because of overconfidence in our own moral compasses, Nitin Nohria tells Big Think. 

“We are the mediocre presidents. You won’t find our faces on dollars or on cents! There’s Taylor, there’s Tyler, There’s Fillmore and there’s Hayes. There’s William Henry Harrison,” (Harrison:) “I […]

A number of responses to my post on mental illness and civil rights deserve some further thought. A number of people have pointed to the variance in definitions of mental […]

Question: How do you remain mindful when juggling two, three, four, however many things at once? Answer: You probably don’t. For a long time, cognitive scientists have observed that processing […]

I asked fellow BigThink blogger Kirsten Winkler if she would join me in writing about the recently-released 2011 K-12 Horizon Report. She’s done a nice job of summarizing the six […]

Osama Bin Laden’s death illustrates the power of social media to spread news, and fast, and to provide a window into reader reactions world-wide.

Hedonistic Sustainability is not an intellectual paradox. It is, instead, the latest and most exciting evolution of the green movement that is just now coming into its own as a […]

What is it about power that changes people – or if not changes, brings out those aspects of them that had heretofore lain dormant? As the old adage goes, power […]