Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom loves investigating the things that make our minds uniquely human, from fiction and art to religion and morality. But where many scientists would be content […]
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“We as a nation are television watchers. Not only do we learn about politics by watching television, but we are television watchers; who we are as humans is in part […]
I hope the New York Times will do a follow-up story on Friday’s “G.I.’s in Iraq Hope to Heal Sacred Walls.” The story — like an NPR broadcast in 2007 […]
Of course he does. And West’s passion for the things he loves is uniquely infectious. When he tells us what he thinks—about anything, from the history of jazz to Obama’s […]
The House of Representatives has passed legislation declaring Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album to be a masterpiece.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured new images of a nebula in our galactic neighborhood just in time for the holidays.
In an effort to publicize a marginalized community, India has held its first ever transsexual beauty pageant.
Radiohead’s front man attended the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and has posted his observations on the band’s website.
The biographer of the late Edward Kennedy says that the senator would have supported the healthcare bill currently before the Senate.
The final two Democratic holdouts have been brought on board by eliminating the public option and making pork barrel promises.
Iran’s most senior dissident cleric who accused the government of being a dictatorship died today after 25 years under house arrest.
The number of executions in the U.S. has dropped for the seventh straight year while more defendants are exonerated by DNA evidence.
The East Coast snow storm has authorities scrambling to free up resources to save Christmas (shopping).
States are unable to investigate fraudulent federal stimulus spending due to layoffs in auditor and legal offices caused by the recession.
Imagine you’re a citizen who cares a whole lot about stopping climate change. When it became clear that a hugely important climate conference would take place in Copenhagen in December […]
Google’s scheme to dominate the world of digital book vending was dealt a legal blow yesterday by a French court who ruled that copyrights of French authors are violated each […]
World leaders left the Copenhagen conference before signing an agreement that would obligate countries to reduce emissions.
Large concessions were made to get the most conservative Democratic Senator on board with healthcare legislation to be unveiled today.
The Department of Homeland Security is studying physical characteristics like strained facial expressions that could betray malintent.
Iranian soldiers took an Iraqi oil well on Thursday night long enough to evacuate Iraqi workers and hoist Iran’s flag inside the well.
Scientists have created synthetic red blood cells that can effectively carry oxygen as well as medicine throughout the body.
A new study indicates that drinking dark liquors like Bourbon is more likely to give you a nasty hangover than clear liquors such as Vodka.
Scientists may have discovered a batch of the mysterious dark matter which makes up 95% of the universe in—Minnesota. Where else?
Some 100 Guantanamo inmates are scheduled to be relocated to an empty prison in the rural town of Thompson, Illinois raising several legal questions.
France has fined Google $14,000 per day until extracts of French books are removed from Google’s online book-digitization project.
Seven more banks have been closed by regulators as mortgage lenders suffer plummeting real-estate prices that will likely cause more banks to close in the future.
There are essentially two ways to make money on Wall Street. The first—let’s call it the old-fashioned way—is to match people who have money with people who can use it […]
This afternoon, Michael Kupperman, the man Conan O’Brien calls “one of the best comedy brains on the planet,” came in for his close-up with Big Think. Despite freezing weather in […]
Much has been made of the soul-affirming, uniting force of sports. The recent Clint Eastwood film, Invictus, paints that portrait around the 1995 World Cup of Rugby, which was hosted […]
James Bain was convicted of kidnapping and rape of a 9 year-old boy in a field back in 1973. The DNA testing of crime scene evidence used to free him […]