Penn and Teller are not like other famous duos, says Penn Jillette, the larger and more talkative of the two magicians. Lennon and McCartney, Martin and Lewis, Jagger and Richards—these relationships were […]
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We all think we know what it means to be conscious, but it is hard to pin this down in a precise, scientific way—as USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in our video. Every weekday in September, Big Think will offer a new insight into the human brain in our new “Going Mental” blog.
While the large banks have survived in one form or another, a spate of small- and medium-size banks are closing across the country at a rate of four to six […]
In a now famous skit from Saturday Night Live, William Shatner told a room full of Trekkies to “get a life.” Like Shatner, highbrows tend to dismiss fan culture as […]
The second part of Eruptions readers’ recollections of the historic May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Sometimes it seems that everyone has abandoned the notion that rational self-interest drives people’s decisions. It’s high time for some answers to the next obvious question: If Reason doesn’t rule […]
Whatever you want to call it, a half-zebra, half-donkey hybrid was born last week in a wildlife preserve in Georgia. The offspring of a zebra father and a donkey mother, […]
Tomorrow morning at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I will be addressing the annual conference of the University Research Magazine Association. I have pasted the text of my prepared remarks […]
Potentially the first eruption in 400 years at Sinabung in Indonesia has prompted the evacuation of thousands on the island of Sumatra.
Jill Tarter, Director of the Center for SETI Research, is searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. But what kinds of signals is she hoping to find? Tarter explains that her […]
“Chucky Fat Face,” artist Chuck Close admits to being called by fellow artist Richard Serra during their graduate school days together at Yale early on in the film Chuck Close, […]
How ironic is it that the FOX News where Sean Hannity has been howling about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wanting “Sharia law” to replace our existing laws is the very […]
Is there a link between Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame and the tragicomic history of Carpatho-Ukraine?
Yesterday a British panel exonerated climate scientists at the center of last year’s Climategate scandal. The scientists had been charged with manipulating scientific evidence to support their beliefs in global […]
One supercontinent, ringing the equator
Friday’s IPCC report represents history’s most definitive statement of scientific consensus on climate change, yet despite the best efforts of scientists, advocates, and several media organizations to magnify wider attention […]
The US goes by the motto In God We Trust (but only since 1956, when it replaced the ‘unofficial’ motto, E pluribus unum). A motto (from the Italian word for […]
The latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics features an important study on the effects of viewing medical dramas on the ethical reasoning of medical and nursing students. From […]
Last week, John Holdren appeared for a 45 minute interview on NPR Science Friday with host Ira Flatow. Below the fold, I have pasted excerpts of his comments relative to […]
Washington DC as a big, red heart, pumping life-blood through the arteries of the nation’s body? Few Americans will view their oft-reviled capital as favourably as this metaphor suggests. However, […]
In the end, the Dutch went for the less ambitious drainage scheme of Cornelis Lely
Does politics today revolve around the dynamics of cable news? What might be the future of traditional network news and how should we prepare students for careers in journalism, media, […]
The last of Etna Week here on Eruptions has guest blogger Boris Behncke talking about the volcanic hazards posed by Mt. Etna.
How much is being American worth to you? Or British, Japanese, or German? The value of one’s nationality is largely intangible, but Nobel laureate Gary Becker tells Big Think that […]
This morning I posted on a fascinating forthcoming study that concludes that generalized messages about science are more impactful on audiences than similarly framed messages that include details on scientific […]
If people realized how different they are from their fellow citizens, the country would fall apart in a weekend. Working as a journalist taught me that. I can’t help noticing, […]
n n n n n At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was called the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ because it didn’t seem able to hold on to […]
Almost 200 years later, you still have to just be awestruck by the magnitude of the “Great Eruption” of Tambora that produced the “Years without a Summer”.
Apart from being a past sponsor of international terrorism and the West’s new best friend in North Africa, Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi is also a crackpot dictator with the bizarrest […]