I don’t write fiction, at all. I can’t make stuff up. But I used to read more fiction than I do now. And occasionally I wonder why I’ve struggled to […]
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A unique history is what distinguishes one family from another, and knowing a family’s distinct set of stories is what binds the group together. While social media connects the larger society, genealogical work is what connects us to our own small group.
Welcome to Action In Action, a new column on Big Think that seeks to investigate and clarify the underlying structural causes of America’s economic, political, and social problems. Some background on […]
The Mind/Body Split in American Acting (and culture) On the whole, and with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood expects its great actors to play themselves in every role. We want […]
A South African model, Jessica Leandra, took to Twitter recently, expressing her anger at being accosted by a man in a store. She said: “Just, well took on a an […]
The United States of America murdered an innocent man. But this is not the main reason we should be against capital punishment. Carlos DeLuna was put to death in 1989 […]
Do you and your partner have “couple friends”–other couples that you socialize with as a couple? Have you thought about their role in your marriage? University of Maryland professor Geoffrey […]
A couple weeks back, I wrote a post for the Economisttrying to get my head around the circumstances in which tax deductions and credits, and tax cuts generally, do and […]
What’s the Big Idea? What Wikipedia is not, according to Wikipedia: a paper encylopedia, a dictionary, a publisher of original thought. A soapbox. A means of self promotion. A link […]
It’s commonplace to imagine the people of the period we know now as the High Renaissance, centered in Italy from the 1490s to the 1520s, looking at the works of […]
Abandoning circular growth, the Russian capital has started sprouting limbs across the surrounding countryside
My household has split opinions on the new Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC. I think it is amazing that a national news show has a black woman with braided hair […]
Thomas K. Lindsay, quite an erudite and distinguished expert, applauds the decision of post-secondary public technical schools in Texas to evaluate institutions and faculty according to how many students have […]
Pulp fiction paperbacks sold by the millions, for a dime, in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite their lapel-grabbing, shocking, often tawdry, salacious covers and contents, they’re interesting cultural relics because […]
This author explains convincingly that we haven’t been concerned enough with our children’s moral virtue—or acquiring the habits required to flourish as free and rational animals in a society such as ours. Aristotle, […]
–Guest post by Josephine Chu, graduate student at American University. In the last ten years, the rise of a variety of web-based and social media platforms has dramatically changed the […]
One of my favorite features of the old site was “Little-Known Bible Verses“, a regular series highlighting frequently overlooked passages from scripture that are immoral, bizarre, or contradict well-established parts […]
At the end of a long and weary day, with the last drops of twilight bleeding out of the darkening midsummer sky, I turned my key in the lock of […]
It is one of the most debated subjects of all time: What is art? Some might think it doesn’t much matter whether or not consensus is achieved on this highly subjective […]
In the first of my posts summing up the Reason Rally, there was a commenter who said that gathering on the National Mall was “sink[ing] to the level of the […]
One of the main reasons why performance art struggles to find a wider audience is because, almost by nature, it cannot reach a wide audience. A performance artist works in […]
President Obama apparently thinks the safer way to justify higher taxes on the super rich is to pitch the proposal based on its deficit-reduction potential. But if he wants to get the ball rolling for meaningful tax reform, Obama will summon his rhetorical powers to explain how the Buffett Rule could help reduce the nation’s massive and destructive wealth inequality.
With spring blooming all around us here in the United States, it’s natural that our thoughts go to, well, last spring, specifically the “Arab Spring” that saw the rise of […]
Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, has just released his eighth book, Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World (New York: Portfolio: 2012). When he first […]
Read ’em and weep. Or just add your own ideas at the bottom of this post. 1. Julian Schnabel. Bombastic, prolific, self-promotional, and grandiose, Schnabelwas the ethos of 1980’s NYC writ large […]
–Guest post by Erin Brett, American University graduate student. Last month, in advance of April Fools Day, CBS Morning News correspondent and satirist Mo Rocca met with the cast of […]
It appears that Santorum’s time as a serious contender for the Republican nomination is about to come to a close. It’s true that the experts (including me) have wrongly counted […]
University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, whose work with Betsey Stevenson I cited in my recent post on why economic growth is a moral imperative, sat down recently to talk […]
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, actively dislike basketball, or subscribe to Time Warner Cable in New York City, you have probably heard that a phenomenon called Linsanity has […]