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Afters months of waiting, I have finally been able to get my act together enough to post the answers to questions you posed to Dr. Adam Kent. If you remember […]

Prester John as virtual as he was virtuous, the legend literally too good to be true.

n n At the beginning of this new year, hardly any map could be as appropriate as this one of Calendria, a place made out of time. This wondrous world […]

Belgium sits astride one of the main cultural fault lines of Europe, consisting roughly of a northern half that speaks Dutch and is oriented towards the ‘anglosphere’ and a southern […]

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman from Tabriz, Iran, whose sentence of execution by stoning was the subject of an international campaign, has received a reprieve from the Iranian Government. Over […]

Despite our puritanical roots, Americans are just as sexually liberated as Europeans, if not more so, according to recent studies. Americans tend to lose their virginity at the same age […]

In my most recent book “Physics of the Impossible,” I define three classes of impossibilities in regards to technology. Class One impossibilities are technologies that are impossible today but don’t […]

P.J. O’Rourke has a clever idea for reviving newspaper sales—the pre-obituary: “official notices that certain people aren’t dead with brief summaries of their lives indicating why we wish they were.”

Last week I posted somewhat optimistically about media reports suggesting a rebirth for independent bookstores. In reply, below is a guest contribution from my colleague Paul D’Angelo, a professor of […]

Mr Cameron has gone to Washington. Have any of you noticed? David Cameron is the new British Prime Minister, and today he is meeting with President Obama in the White […]

There is at least one way of guaranteeing Western media interest in the United Nations; a leaked letter from a disgruntled former employee that attacks a “leaking culture” within the […]

Daily Show host Jon Stewart is the most trusted man in America.  Or at least as Chris Smith writes in a cover story at this week’s New York magazine, in […]

Are spies like us? Just watch this. And then, well ensconced in romance and nostalgia, consider that Ian Fleming said—or did he write?—that “men want a woman whom they can […]

BP has been using controlled burns to limit the spread of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. In the process they are burning much of what wildlife remains in the […]

For a brief window of time after the fall of communism, it really seemed that the world was at the ‘end of history‘. That phrase was coined by Francis Fukuyama, […]

Music Professor Jason Freeman has created open source composition software to encourage the public to remix and compose sheet music.

I spend a lot of time on my laptop. Too much time? Don’t know, don’t care. C’est la vie (moderne), etc. But what does irk me is that I’m stuck […]

Gallup has released a cross-national polling analysis that challenges the conclusion that Muslim extremism is at the heart of support for terrorism, that terrorism derives from a rejection of Western […]

In a press conference yesterday, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is planning to make it much simpler for users to figure out how much information they are making […]

“[The painting is] one of the most powerful, horrible and yet fascinating pictures that has been painted anywhere in this century,” wrote the New York Tribune in 1879 of then […]

This idea was suggested by Big Think Delphi Fellow Joseph LeDoux, of the Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology at NYU. “Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better […]

As advice columnists go, Emiy Yoffe of “Dear Prudence” is usually relatively compassionate. Today, however, Prudie was shockingly cruel to a young woman* grieving the loss of her best friend: […]

The author and former vet wishes war movies could give audiences a taste of reality, and that warmongering politicians would risk their own lives on the front lines.

This is inimitable Harper’s: contrasting the unbearable lightness of a medium (in this case, chat) with the often sublime depth of its subject (here, terror). One of the June issue’s […]

Here’s a shocking bit of news: Plans for a big, shiny Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem are not going smoothly. This multi-part attack last month in the newspaper Haaretz blames […]

Last week the NSF Science Indicators report was released, triggering more dramatic calls to action and overstated warnings from commentators about the alleged decline of science in American society. This […]

This past weekend, a diversity of scholars and experts were called to Oregon for what might be described as a “three cultures summit” on climate change. The two-day deliberation included […]

Alan Boyle, the science editor for MSNBC.com, answers our questions about science, the mainstream media and the fallout of the Chilean earthquake coverage.

The author says he wishes people would just take more responsibility for their own food consumption and cook food at home more often.

The role of the federal government should be to facilitate opportunity and choice for people who wish to travel.