When author Nathan Englander visited Big Think, I had one major question for him, which I asked in about six different ways. How, I wondered, do you dare to embark […]
Search Results
You searched for: Writer
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 […]
Dr, Michio Kaku: Sadly, the US government will no longer boldly go into space. Its up to private enterprise to now pick up the slack and it appears that is exactly what its doing.
an Iron Chef style creative contest in which you’ll have 72 hours to write a short piece of science fiction inspired by our surprise “big idea.” The best entries will be published on Big Think’s homepage, visited by 1.5 million viewers a month.
What is the Big Idea? Israel ranked 14th on the United Nations first World Happiness Report launched on April 2. Topping the list are peaceful and ultra-liberal countries like Denmark, Finland, […]
I can still vividly remember reading, back in 2001, the New York Times Magazinewrite-up on the release of The Corrections. It began: Some days, Jonathan Franzen wrote in the dark. […]
Not long ago one of the writers I follow on Twitter posted something like this: “My apologies for the totally un-clever nature of this tweet, but does anyone have a […]
Energy efficiency means cheaper energy. Cheaper energy means having more money to spend on energy. See the problem? What we really must accept is slower economic growth.
The still life, or, as the French would say, “nature morte,” died sometime around the middle of the 20th century, despite modern art’s attempts to resuscitate the genre into Cubism […]
We expect works of art to enlighten us, and we expect science to enlighten us — yet the two fields are frequently regarded as separate, distinct entities which we respond to using different areas of the brain. Are those distinctions are arbitrary?
With its stagnant economy, the United States should pick out the best ideas from the Chinese model of economic development and fit them to work for its own system.
Just around the corner from my desk something strange is happening. Miles and miles of hair is being teased into place, bucket loads of make-up are being applied and delicate […]
Is there any reason to avoid death? We all die eventually, but is it a destiny sealed in for a predetermined time, or do we actually have some control over how long we are on this Earth?
In 1962, the latest and greatest form of artificial illumination was invented; the light emitting diode (LED). In recent years, they have reached a level of illumination suitable for most applications of indoor lighting.
Several years ago, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister conducted a study that measured the productivity of computer programmers. Their data set included more than 600 programmers from 92 companies. According […]
What’s the Big Idea? If you’ve ever shopped, socialized, or signed up for anything online, there’s a chance that information you offered up willingly, in a seemingly private context, is […]
What’s the Big Idea? There’s a revolution going on in neuroscience, says science writer Kayt Sukel, and it’s happening on two fronts. One way the science is changing: researchers are […]
All I can say is thank you to the readers who suggested that I pick up 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I loved it. But it wasn’t because of the language, […]
Becoming a digital pirate must be the least profitable theft crime ever. Using your technical know-how, not to mention buying and setting up servers to not sell anything. Why do people do it?
Like their namesakes from fable who live under bridges, “Trolls” are people who write nasty remarks and live underneath an online article, in its Comments section. Media mavens and content […]
Abandoning circular growth, the Russian capital has started sprouting limbs across the surrounding countryside
“Write what you know” isn’t about events, says author Nathan Englander. It’s about emotions. Have you known love? jealousy? longing? loss? As a kid, did you want that Atari 2600 so bad you might have killed for it?
One theme that consistently emerges in Teju Cole’s work is an interest in creating space, through literature, for those bits of real, complex experience that can find their expression nowhere else.
Bravo to Janaka Stucky, whose new article in Poetry on struggling independent bookstores is both the most sensible and inspiring thing I’ve read on the subject. Stucky concedes what everyone in […]
When we think of tyrants or dictators, I think many of us conjure up either Orwellian or, rather, Stalinist-type regimes; but as these are steadily disappearing from the world, we […]
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 […]
I agree in a broad sense that Weiner owes it to both his audience and his art to be true to what he discovers about the history of the era he’s chosen to depict.
Tom Jacobs of Miller-McCune reports on a study from Scott Eidelman, et al, finding that “Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism.” Here’s Jacobs’ summary: A research team led by University of […]
I know at least some of you are thinking: I already feel like I am having sex with a robot. But new research predicts that we will be having sex […]
I’d be remiss if I let 2011 slip by without a tribute to Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979), who was born a century ago and who now looms larger over contemporary poetry […]