In the middle of writing and reading about gun policy and morality, I was horrified to see responses to writer Sam Harris’ essay on gun control. For example, this one […]
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One day, I found a press release from an academic journal, calling attention to one of its articles. That is unusual enough, since the kinds of articles that Aaron Swartz–a […]
The Verge’s Nilay Patel digs deeper into the recently-announced policy change that has Instagram users riled up. The reaction reveals that both have something to learn about each other.
Despite the convictions we hold of our own moral correctness, we are easily brought under the influence of group morals, i.e. our behavior is motivated by our desire to be faithful to a group.
Weeks before a major UN conference is scheduled to take place in Qatar, young people will hit the streets in more than a dozen countries across the region.
The neuroscience of creativity is flourishing. But will the popularity of this subject lead to better, or sloppier science?
A professor has over 100,000 titles available on Amazon UK, all of them “written” by — not “with the help of”, but “by” — software he created.
What’s your Halloween ideal: Alfred Hitchcock or Wes Craven? If you pick the Master of Suspense over Nightmare on Elm Street, then I have the ultimate Halloween artist for you: […]
Starting today, the mobile wallet app allows you to pay for that grande skinny mocha whatsis at 7,000 US locations.
NASA now has a site, Spot the Station, that lets you register to receive a text alert whenever the craft is passing over your location.
Do you live on your own edge? Living on the edge is exactly what inspired, highly motivated people aspire to always do. Last December, I went to the grand finale […]
Not content with publishing a fake newspaper, producing a fake news channel, and delivering the best satire on the Web to millions of genuine fans, the staff of The Onion […]
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that we need to break out of our “A-to-B thinking” in order to bring big, audacious ideas into existence.
We’re very fortunate at Big Think to have so many great thinkers and writers in our midst, and the woman of the moment right now is Maria Konnikova, author of […]
Blurb, which until now focused only on books, will allow Adobe InDesign users to create custom-made magazines and brochures through its digital platform starting today.
Poetry critic and Harvard professor Helen Vendler has published a refreshing article in Harvard magazine, in which she encourages the school to welcome mediocre students who also happen to be great writers. […]
According to The Independent, a recent Yale-Moscow State University study has found “a modest but statistically significant familiality and heritability element to creative writing.” The conclusion was based on an evaluation […]
A company has started an Indiegogo campaign to bring its Muse wearable headband to market. Writer Stacey Higginbotham describes what has to happen to make this kind of interface a commercial success.
What was first, the chicken or the map? That question is perhaps as unanswerable as the one featuring hen vs. egg [1]. Not that it matters. Stare long enough at […]
Country motto: Don’t do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Aren’t we all honorary citizens?
Ask most people to describe a “robot,” and they’d probably start to describe something vaguely human-looking, maybe something a little metallic or shiny with limbs. Something like the Roboy. Or WALL-E. Or […]
The success of this weekend’s protest against a chemical plant’s expansion underlines the growing care the government is having to take with its restless, wired middle class.
Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts.
A few days ago, 64 influential Catholics appealed to their co-religionists in Congress to support gun-control legislation. They laid down a pretty solid Catholic guilt trip: Members of Congress who […]
Recent break-ins at several Texas hotels have been traced to a digital pickpocketing tool that takes advantage of a security vulnerability in locks found in millions of rooms worldwide.
Next in the company’s plans for world domination: The ability to find answers to the questions you normally don’t think of going to a computer to ask.
For readers in the Boston area, I will be giving a talk at Boston University’s College of Communication on Thursday, December 6 The talk is a preview of the […]
I wanted my audience to identify with Shylock in a deeply personal way, so much so that they would involuntarily nod and think, “Yes, I understand, I have been there.”
A comprehensive study out of Sweden suggests that creative people are more likely to have bipolar disorder, particularly writers. The implication is that art can be used as therapy.
Perhaps when mass killings really start to hurt the majority of the population, then we’ll take stronger action against them. But for now, we like them too much.