China’s recent purchase of the Virginia-based Smithfield Hams, in what amounts to the largest corporate buyout to date of an American company by the Chinese, is just one of its many global investments.
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Inequality in income and wealth in America has worsened in the last decades. The 15 items here, some monumental and some small, speak to the everyday texture of that inequality, […]
For the most part, your chances of success in life are a function of the circumstances of your birth.
Despite knowing the full-colored truth, I’ve always pictured the 1930s and 1940s in black and white. Laura,The Big Sleep, The Killers, Shadow of a Doubt, and countless other examples of […]
Why have drug laws been disproportionately enforced against the poor and younger and darker-skinned members of society?
To wit, it is time to abolish the IRS.
Works of great literature are often said to possess a special moral sensibility that considers human nature from an elevated position and guides us down the moral pathway.
Through experiments, scientists are coming to a more complex understanding of how oxytocin, a brain chemical commonly referred to as the love hormone, works in long term relationships as well as initial attractions.
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a surprising new phase in the learning process in which synapses shrink which explains why cramming for exams yields few long term benefits.
So if you want to read a really thoughtful and combative commencement speech, here’s Leon Wieseltier’s (the literary editor of the New Republic) deep and inspiring intellectual defense of the […]
With rare exception, neuroscientists cannot yet translate aberrant brain functions into the legal requirements for criminal responsibility—intent, rational capacity and self-control.
“It is time” physicist Neil Turok has said, “to connect our science to our humanity, and in doing so to raise the sights of both”. This sounds like a job for a philosophy not yet dead.
Since late April, the not-for-profit organization, Mars One, has been flooded with applications for a one-way ticket to colonize Mars in 2023.
Proponents of marijuana use have enjoyed a string of successes lately as both Washington and Colorado voted to legalize the use recreational use of the drug in the November 2012 election.
If you live long enough everything can happen. Cloning, Honey Boo Boo, a feature movie based on “The Brady Bunch,” Twitter… “I miss the 1970s,” a friend says at a […]
LITTLE IS known about China in Europe and America. Although the Chinese were enviable thinkers for over three millennia, almost nothing of their originality has reached us intact. The reason […]
Regenerative medicine, which seeks to regrow lost or damaged human body parts ranging from patches of skin to entire limbs, may prove especially promising given recent advances in genetic therapy.
Health experts have long observed the link between work-related stress and conditions such as heart disease, but eliminating the pressure that comes with professional life is largely unrealistic for many.
When today’s military technologists confront the problem of machine versus human performance, it is typically human performance that must be improved upon to meet the needs of machines.
Whether you run or walk, experts say any kind of physical physical exercise is better than none. But new health studies have better defined the benefits of running versus walking.
A spine chilling new documentary addresses the myriad of new tools for surveillance that are now being put to use in the the UK’s capital city. We learn of the […]
With the Welsh measles epidemic only now beginning to slow I thought now would be a good time to repost Daryl Cunningham‘s fantastic explainer (below) on how we came to be in […]
With severe and potentially deadly weather continuing tonight in the central United States, an important reminder of what not to do from a post on last fall’s tornadoes in Oklahoma: […]
Proposed at this week’s D11 conference: A chip in the form of a daily pill that, when swallowed, turns a person’s body into an authentication token. Also offered: An electronic tattoo worn for a week at a time.
One widely useful mental habit that we teach in our class at the Center for Applied Rationality is called reference class forecasting, and it’s for the most part, in the literature, […]
While other European countries are up in arms over what they say are Google’s invasions of privacy, Lithuania is using Street View to uncover and go after citizens with unreported taxable assets, such as buildings and cars.
Over the past two weeks on BigThink, I’ve shared the first two of a three-part dialogue between myself and the Danish psychotherapist Ole Vadum Dahl (read part 1 and part […]
I became a writer after I read Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller when I was 22. I couldn’t believe somebody wrote that book.
Taking risks doesn’t mean being stupid. It really involves taking measured risks and really understanding how to mitigate those risks in one way or another.
Using raw images from NASA’s website, space nerd Karl Sanford constructed this short time-lapse video that features highlights of the Curiosity Rover’s visit to Mars.