Every status update, every tweet, every pin is a micro-jolt delivered squarely to the pleasure centers of our brains.
Search Results
You searched for: beauty
Nearly two decades ago, I walked into my first Abnormal Psychology class. Given the course title, I thought I had a pretty good handle on what the subject matter would […]
Before reading please click ‘View Entire Story’. My apologies for the length. Over at the New Statesman, Mehdi Hasan wrote an article against abortion. It’s not entirely clear whether Hasan […]
When a German court in Cologne ruled last month that baby boys could not be circumcised for religious reasons, Jewish and Muslim groups erupted in protest while a chorus of […]
If Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus shown above seems a bit off, you’re right. In this version of “Venus on the Half-Shell,” the goddess is almost half her self, thanks […]
What could be better than starting your morning, visiting your online haunts, and being confronted, bleary-eyed, with a picture of a blonde woman in a catsuit having her breast suckled […]
This post was originally written for the “Because I Am An Atheist” series at The Crommunist Manifesto. Thanks to Crommunist for the inspiration! Because I am an atheist, I don’t […]
The big news this week is that the Large Hadron Collider, the massive particle accelerator at the European physics lab CERN, has apparently discovered the elusive and long-sought subatomic particle […]
In 1923, during an exhibition of his art collection that would become the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, two years later, Dr. Albert C. Barnes told an interviewer, “I am […]
While he does not do drugs himself, Penn Jillette also does not believe other people should go to jail for “victimless crimes,” pointing out that 1 in 6 people in prison in the U.S. today are “in there for weed.”
“Bread. Kasha. Sometimes fish. Water.” Those are the things that Maryna Vroda, winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year for the best short film, lists […]
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 […]
Will the natural gas boom revitalize the U.S. economy and provide us energy for 100 years?
The weakness of online education, as far as I can tell, is the evaluation of student performance.
Our interview with neuroscientist David Eagleman aired live on our site on Monday, April 30th, 2012. In this recap, he discusses his latest book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the […]
The evolutionary development of human consciousness has proven extremely successful. This is because it allows us to enjoy life and overcome the reality of our foreboding death.
Scientists have hoped that one day people with severe forms of paralysis could use brain-computer interfaces to perform tasks to better their lives. That day has now come.
Both links/excerpts come from Eric Barker at the reliably stimulating Barking up the Wrong Tree. First, strong relationships. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel […]
Editorial note: This is a guest post by Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar, the 20 year old Iraqi founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement – a forum for the discussion of rational […]
A new meme is emerging in the blogosphere: Obama as the “imperial president.” From the left, Tom Egelhardt claims Obama “has the powers previously associated with the gods” while Steve […]
If we wish to honor our 21st century gods (technology, capitalism), we might do well to hold a competition that celebrates the achievements of the human mind, not the body.
“Why are we picking at these carcasses of creativity?” Holly Finn asks in a recent Wall Street Journal article, pointing her critical finger at the particular corpse of Damien Hirst’s […]
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 […]
Every May brings with it a new crop of college graduation speeches. This spring, few (maybe none) were as though-provoking as multimedia artist Laurie Anderson’s at the School of Visual […]
With bookstores vanishing, the Pulitzer committee skimping on Pulitzers, and the Amazon dragon twining its bright yellow coils around every publisher on Earth, the book industry finds itself in dire peril. But lo! What […]
Human beings have the capacity to stop time. It is, in fact, a commonly used capacity. We use our ability to stop time as a bulwark against the threat of […]
On the one day that we think the most about mothers, grandmothers, godmothers, and all other motherly types, it seems appropriate to ask what is the greatest Mother’s Day portrait […]
Cheers for STEM. But what about the, um, rest of the fabulous, life changing, extraordinary and often more important teachers who don’t teach math, engineering, technology or science?
People are not talking enough about The Bridge of San Luis Rey. No question, it’s a well-respected novel: it won the Pulitzer in 1928 and came in at #37 on […]