Prison does things to a man, even if he gets to go home at the end of a long day of guarding the inmates. Scotland’s HM Prison Barlinnie features the […]
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If you went on Facebook yesterday, it may have appeared that everyone’s profile had suddenly gotten hacked. Your timeline was probably awash in a sea of red equal signs or […]
In a radio interview last week, controversial New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg all but conceded that unmanned NYPD spy drones would one day be flying overhead in Manhattan. It’s a “scary” concept, […]
Experts say that climate change is affecting the wine industry both in terms of budding grape growing locations — like Denmark — and the quality of wines produced in established locations.
1. The Bill Gates Condom The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will award a $100,000 grant to the person who invents a next-generation condom that “significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in […]
A report out from the EPA this week says that only one in five rivers and streams are in good condition, and just over half are in poor condition.
A small annoyance that’s more consequential than it sounds: In the same-sex marriage debate, heterosexual, male-female couples are regularly described by judges, pundits, and advocates alike as “opposite sex” couples. […]
The evolution of the Web today is happening faster than the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 due to processing power, bandwidth and storage, “creating a curve of exponential change.”
3-D printers are currently capable of producing usable car parts, cat-scanned reproductions of ancient Sumerian clay envelopes with letters inside, and cool-looking geometric desktop toys. That’s very exciting indeed. But […]
If your house got blown away by a hurricane, you’d probably want to build a stronger house next time, right? The same should be true for financial markets. The government […]
By genetically modifying a unique microorganism, researchers have discovered a way to turn atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into useful industrial products. Their find could lead to the creation of biofuels that “remove plants as the middleman.”
A study published in the recent issue of Geology ties seismic events in central Oklahoma to wastewater produced from oil extraction and injected deep underground.
It has wings coated in photovoltaic cells that power four electric motors, and next month, the Solar Impulse single-seater will fly from California to New York.
We are no longer in a period of rapid change! We have now entered a unique period of time, unlike anything any of us have ever seen, that can best […]
Yesterday on NPR, Jenna Chavez, a member of an evangelical church in El Paso, Texas, succinctly summed up the foundation for the argument against same-sex marriage: [Marriage has] been defined…for […]
MIT, Harvard and Stanford universities have all begun offering massive open online courses for free, but the larger ramifications on our national education may be adverse, say experts.
Two new mobile apps—one from Google and one from a smaller tech startup—may indicate how large scale data analysis, i.e. Big Data, can help you manage your daily affairs.
I advocate and defend things many people consider controversial. But it should be noted: Supporting adults’ rights to take their own lives, cut their bodies, solicit sex workers, etc., is […]
Update: Following the publication of this post and all of your thoughtful responses, the Big Think editors have decided to discontinue the Big Think’s relationship with Kanazawa. This is a response […]
Without paying money for goods and services, customers have little recourse when a company decides to radically change its game plan. Is your data in danger of disappearing?
Dan Fagin’s new book “Toms River, A Story of Science and Salvation”, about a classic type of environmental story back in the 80s and 90s, the ‘cancer cluster’, is a […]
What Tyson has done is presented science from another angle. Call it the “we don’t know it yet” angle.
We spend 80 million hours a day watching videos on YouTube, and we would certainly like to have a few of those hours back. That is, of course, if we are […]
Experimental researchers at the Pentagon have just undertaken a four-year project to build artificially intelligent computers that can teach themselves new and better artificial intelligence.
Beyond the microchip lies quantum computing. Beyond that lies quark-scale computing, made from materials a billion billion billion times smaller than the current computational scale.
One of the must-see destinations for any traveler to New York City is The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Skirting the eastern edge of Central Park, the Met epitomizes the encyclopedic […]
“It’s absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil—we think it’s a myth,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, author of a new energy report by the National Research Council.
New statistics suggest that Bolivia is successfully reducing the number of its farmers who make a living off growing coca plants which, when processed, is the essential ingredient in cocaine.
1. Is the Purpose of Life to Make Babies? Why are we here? To fullfil some grand purpose or merely to perpetuate our genes? Is the act of helping to ensure […]
The Supreme Court could make history with its rulings on the legality of both California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.