Search Results

Here are some odd questions: do you spend more time on the calls you make than on the calls you receive? 

It’s amazing what you can find in art when you really, really want to find it there. Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage claims that they’ve found evidence of a […]

In the final guest post on Colorado’s defeated Amendment 62, a “personhood” initiative that would have given full legal rights to fertilized human eggs, Trina Stout examines the effect of […]

How can an entire universe come out of nothing? This would seem to violate the conservation of matter and energy, but Michio Kaku explains the answer.

Just under two months ago I received the news that I, along with 10 of my co-workers, would be laid off. Unlike most I was OK with this as I […]

There has been outrage from both sides of the aisle at the deal that Obama has worked out with the Republican leadership to extend the Bush tax cuts. Some Republicans […]

Northwestern University professor Alice Eagly says the highest leadership positions today are more open to women than ever—but there are female-specific branches at each career stage that lead many away.

Every so often – say once or twice every few months – it really does seem, at least from the outside, as if Yemen is falling apart, and, gasp, could […]

When the decision-makers at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery decided to drop David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from their exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American […]

“Tariq Ramadan says [the Ground Zero Islamic Center] should be built elsewhere. He debates Mustafa Bayoumi, an associate professor at Brooklyn College.”

Ever since he came out to the public in February 2007, former NBA player John Amaechi says he has been “that big gay guy.” But there is much more to […]

Like Satan, he is known by many names—Sinterklaas, Père Noël, Tomte—but we Americans call him Santa Claus. The long white beard, red outfit, reindeer, etc., all seem like givens to […]

At the NY Times today, beliefs correspondent Mark Oppenheimer reports on last week’s Council for Secular Humanism conference in Los Angeles.  His article discusses the infighting within the movement.  As […]

Big Think salutes 10 women who have made inroads in professions that have traditionally been the province of men.

For politicians, the election cycle never ends. Now that the 2010 midterms are over—or almost—it’s time to start thinking about 2012. Two years from now the real prize, the presidency, […]

At the New Yorker last week, science journalist Jonah Lehrer penned a conversation-starting feature on the so-called “decline effect,” the tendency across scientific fields for a new and exciting finding […]

Traditional communication campaigns seek to raise awareness, change behavior, or change policy. The FrameWorks Institute, in contrast, seeks to fundamentally reframe how Americans understand social issues, and through this new […]

There has been much in the way of news since our last blog post a few days ago, but in Waq al-waq’s typical shotgun approach we will only discuss what […]

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

Scientists at CERN laboratory in Switzerland scored a major breakthough recently when they trapped atoms of anti-matter for the first time in history. Fans of Star Trek know the potential […]

Each sport is governed by different sets of rules, and those that use balls each have different specifications for their equipment.

Every so often a meme comes along that reaffirms the positive potential of the Internet. Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project” is one such example. “When a 13 year-old kills […]

One powerful woman picks up the phone. Thomas v. Hill, 2010. We now know that the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has called Anita Hill, after twenty years, […]

Daryl J. Bem’s experiments on psi caught the world’s attention, as I posted last month, because he used standard psychology-lab methods to gather and analyze his data. Imagine what astronomers […]

Pilots who shun full body scans are exempt from the TSA’s new “enhanced” body searches. Flight attendants are not. Their respective unions complained about the searches, but only pilots got […]

Conservatives have long accused billionaire George Soros of funding activist watchdog group Media Matters. Soros has been suspected of being behind every liberal group after giving more than $23 million […]

“Narcissists, new experiments show, are great at convincing others that their ideas are creative even though they’re just average.” Science on business and self-love.

Remember The Who, talkin’ ’bout their generation? Maybe to a 20-year-old guy in the 1960s, the idea of wanting to die before getting old sounded pretty cool. But, you would […]

Today’s customers expect more from leading companies and brands than they ever have before. As enlightened consumers empowered by the Internet, they have the power to propel brands to tremendous […]

A new paper that finds that male professors who are “hot” are financially rewarded, while female professors who are “hot” are not.