“Being a submissive or dutiful patient doesn’t always pay off,” says Susan Gubar, professor emerita of English at Indiana University. “Sometimes it’s good to be bad.”
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Scientists in the UK have sketched workable plans to encode hard data onto strands of human DNA which, instead of decaying like computers, would last three billion years or more.
A few weeks ago, I was in line at the grocery store and overheard the following exchange. “The cop gave her a ticket for texting and driving. She wasn’t speeding […]
Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Speak Spanish? Lose weight? Then set aside $100 of your pretax income to donate to the Westboro Baptist Church.
If we know that we are bad at predicting and can account for the underlying psychology then why do we continue to make bad predictions?
Here’s the third part of my celebration of Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos. I know I’m annoying many BIG THINK readers. I may even be bad for their health; […]
If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]
It’s strange to think how young the Internet is, considering its enormity and complexity, and yet how powerful it has become as a means to connect people from around the […]
Individuals’ personalities – yours and mine included – are not as stable as we think they are.
The student center at Brooklyn College will be abuzz Thursday evening at 6:30 when two speakers propose boycotting, divesting and applying sanctions on Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. […]
Waiting in line to pay admission late last month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in a sea of heavy-winter-coated humanity, I asked myself why this […]
I’m taking a break from talking about conservative diversity to think more about justifying the content of liberal education these days. So here’s an account of chairs of departments of history […]
The pioneering technology, which involves a combination of different medical imaging systems, could eventually replace conventional autopsy.
Did you know that time travel was possible? It really is. For example, you can visit remote parts of the Amazon River and meet people who are living just as […]
The amount of solar energy being produced by solar panels is doubling every 2 years.
Evolutionary psychology has proven a powerful theory in explaining behavioral differences between men and women in terms of natural selection, but challenges to the idea have emerged.
An algorithm that distills articles into poetry has several purposes, including acknowledging National Poetry Month and giving readers one more way to experience the Old Gray Lady’s content.
So what will you be doing Sunday night? My advice: Watch more TV! Now you innovative and disruptive BIG THINK readers might think you don’t have the time. But that’s […]
So I’ve gotten several emails asking what I think about the idea talked up by the devoted Democratic professor Jonathan Zimmerman in the semi-iconoclastic Christian Science Monitor: affirmative action for conservatives […]
What will it mean to have a dissenter like Chuck Hagel as an ombudsman at the top at the Defense Department?
A new math curriculum is needed to move us from the knowledge economy to “the computational knowledge economy where high-level math is integral to what everyone does.”
One of Sandberg’s important points, in my opinion, is that women should cross the bridge of work-family conflict when they get to it.
How can we train our brains to think like Sherlock Holmes? We need to develop the core skill of mindfulness.
Patriarch Kirill also advised clergy to choose cars that are “more modest” than the expensive ones they’re used to.
So you really have to hand it to The Atlantic. It’s the magazine that’s “thinking outside the box” (I actually hate that phrase; anyone who uses it can be found […]
We’re very fortunate at Big Think to have so many great thinkers and writers in our midst, and the woman of the moment right now is Maria Konnikova, author of […]
Back in February I shared my thoughts on Pearson and why I think they should target the market with their own tablet device. Back then the iPad 2 was still […]
If so, the Gates Foundation wants to hear from you: They have launched a competition to find prophylactic designs that will encourage more people to use them, particularly in the developing world.
Despite the fact that an estimated one million patients use marijuana as medicine every year, the U.S. has restricted research on marijuana. In other words, we don’t know conclusively what its dangers and benefits are.
Like any big, bold idea, Elon Musk’s plan for colonizing Mars strikes you at first glance as indeed crazy. And yet, the reason for Musk’s success in leading four of the most innovative companies in America is that he is analytically minded, first and foremost.