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The top videos of summer, ’12, featuring experts such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dr. Michio Kaku, Slavoj Zizek, Jaron Lanier and many others. 

Jane McGonigal discusses the skills we learn from gaming and how can they help us enhance, rather than detract from our ambitions as humans.  

Sometime in 1952, the American experimental musician John Cage put the finishing touches on a composition that challenged the definition of music. It was a three-part movement written for any […]

Just as Visa offers different perks of membership to its platinum and gold cardholders, so could the government to its citizens, based on wealth.

One reason I can’t buy the claim that conservative intellectual has become an oxymoron is that on our campuses it’s so often the conservatives who defend “liberal education.”  I’m going […]

For the past few days I’ve been thinking out loud about the importance of narrative form to the mind—that way we have of being much more impressed by information in […]

In November of 1977, Houston hosted a national women’s conference to hammer out a broad agenda against sexual inequality. It was hailed as the most diverse American political gathering in […]

[Editor’s Note: Please welcome Sarah Jane Braasch-Joy back to Daylight Atheism! Regular readers from before my move to Big Think will remember her as a dedicated defender of feminism and […]

A few years ago I gave a sermon at my (very liberal) church asking the question: “What determines the limit to our tolerance?” After the service, one member of the […]

The title of the Wall Street Journal‘s recent article on enhanced e-books—”Blowing Up the Book”—strikes me as an appropriate blend of the exciting and the ominous. (See also: “Kindle Fire.”) The format is a […]

Casablanca, kissing, the giddy exchange of bodily fluids, the pressing of the flesh—It’s all so 20th century. Today there doesn’t need to be sex in your sex anymore. The “virtual,” […]

The utopia of instant, effortless DIY success for writers remains a pipe dream. Still, digital distribution and online networking are calling into question the established paths to artistic fame and fortune. Into this vacuum steps Storiad, an intriguing new approach to empowering writers and connecting them with the right buyers for their work.

Grosset & Dunlap/Price Stern Sloan President and Publisher Francesco Sedita had a meeting with his entire team of editors, art directors and designers recently. The subject? A mustache. “We’ve been […]

Earlier this year, novelist Jane Smiley contributed an entertaining and provocative piece to Big Think’s “How to Think Like Shakespeare” series. In it she wrote that while composing A Thousand […]

Like other local and state governments, Topeka, Kansas is in the grips of a dismal budget crisis. So this week, Topeka’s City Council did something desperate. They debated decriminalizing domestic […]

When sculptor Seward Johnson’s 26-foot-tall tribute to Marilyn Monroe came under public scrutiny after last month’s unveiling in Pioneer Court in Chicago, he knew there would be a blow-up of […]

So here’s some more on THE HELP. My first post dealt with the film’s display of the middle-class racist tyranny, mainly of women, in Jackson, Mississippi in1963. My opinion is […]

There is so much beautiful writing about war. One of the first, best stories of a soldier (and his return home) is Homer’s The Odyssey. It captures –metaphorically, and at […]

In a guest post today, Lauren Krizel reports on an event held this week in Washington, DC that gathered some of the city’s top chefs to discuss sustainability and the […]

V.S. Naipaul is without question or controversy one of the finest living writers. Yet the controversy surrounding his recent interview with the Royal Geographic Society, in which he effectively takes […]

For many Washington, DC readers the upcoming event at the Newseum, co-organized by the School of Communication at American University, is likely to be of strong interest.  Details are below […]

Oh, I love this quote by an unnamed (Is there any other kind?) Saudi adviser:“The orders are not to go physically into Yemeni territory,” he said. “We don’t want to […]

Waq al-waq’s spring cleaning goes on, as we continue to ignore stories in nearly every sector. But I think it is time for a quick round-up.First is this story about […]

Well this is probably more of an insight into my social life than most would like, but the new issue of Sada al-Malahim (The Echo of Battles not the Glorious […]

By now most of us have seen the 1950’s “The Good Wife’s Guide“—the one that tells women that a “Good Wife” is one who acknowledges her husband as master of […]

“The creator of America’s first and best satirical daily newspaper cartoon talks about 40 years of upsetting politicians and editors.”

So, the new Thomas Pynchon novel came out today. I am not that far into it, but have been re-reading a lot of Pynchon the last few weeks as a […]

Rep Bruce Braley (D-Ia) paid a visit to the “headquarters,” of the American Future Fund, a shadowy 501(c)4 group that has spent nearly $1 million to defeat him in the […]

“When life is being led in public, every word and gesture is open to criticism.” A new book explains how social media recall the dating games of Jane Austin’s provincial England.

In California, 2/3 of voters still remain relatively unaware of Proposition 23, a ballot measure backed by out-of-state oil and gas companies that would end California’s regulation of greenhouse gas […]