Mark Twain asked that his biography not be published until 100 years after his death. “He was certainly a man who knew how to make people want to buy a book,” says its publisher.
All Articles
The good news is Americans are living longer than ever; the bad news is this increases the chances of getting Alzheimer’s, and no preventative treatment has proven successful.
Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg says Germany would do better to leave the Euro currency than impose domestic market reforms like bans on short-selling and speculation.
Naturally occurring bacteria, which are the only real solution to the Gulf oil spill, are much more effective than any lab-grown microbe—further proof that man cannot best mother nature.
Without disputing the immorality of Confederate slavery, the role it played in igniting the Civil War remains debatable among historians a century and half since Appomattox.
“How could you conceivably cut yourself off from other men and from the life they bring you in such abundance? In the name of what uncaring, ivory-tower kind of attitude?” […]
It looks like it may finally be the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The policy, which dates back to 1993, was a Clintonian compromise meant to prevent […]
Human beings give their attention readily to people who already have it. It doesn’t matter if a guy won fame for his action movies, people will listen to his advice […]
“We may not have free will, but we have ‘free wont’, which is as good as saying we’re not totally deterministic. So far so good,” writes Dr. David Rock.
Should the next generation learn Chinese? “Despite China’s rise, Chinese isn’t the world language of the future; the writing system simply makes it far too hard,” says Robert Green.
“Overuse injuries, overtraining and burnout among child and adolescent athletes are a growing problem in the United States,” says pediatrician Dr. Joel S. Brenner.
“Dubbed the ‘best-known Muslim in all of Europe,’ a ‘Muslim Martin Luther,’ and ‘the prophet of a new Euro-Islam'”, Tariq Ramadan is a Muslim reformist worth considering.
Though nearly every university has a women’s studies department, the lack of men’s studies in a time of declining male performance is an issue some professors are confronting.
What moves the world and its institutions are highly changeable emotions of groups of individuals, not rational decision making, says author and sociologist John Casti.
West Philadelphia high school has entered two cars into the X-Prize competition which requires production-ready models that get over 100 miles per gallon.
Once a darling of the left, Christopher Hitchens turned to support neo-conservative foreign policy and has written a new memoir about his political evolution.
Historical perversions and obfuscating euphemisms have the support of the Texas school book board which is seeking to tell an especially politicized version of history.
Adding nanoparticles to water increase its thermal conductivity, or its ability to take heat away from something, which could save the world a significant amount of electricity.
In an exhibition currently at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, a crane reaches into a mountain of clothes and pulls out at random a selection of shirts, […]
How can scientists be religious? How has religion evolved, according to science? In a special series this week, Big Think rounds up a learned cast of thought leaders—from a computer […]
New York’s excerpt of literary agent Bill Clegg’s memoir has the rush and pull of Jay McInernery’s Bright Lights, Big City. McInerney was celebrated for placing his action in the […]
A doctor who touched off a worldwide panic over an alleged link between the MMR vaccine and autism has been barred from practicing medicine over unethical research practices. Britain’s General […]
As media and communication technology continue to evolve, the question on everyone’s minds is how do we harness this innovation and its capacity to improve lives, foster social good and […]
The words “packet switching” don’t mean much to many people. But for Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, packet switching is what ultimately gave him the title, “Father […]
After 7-year-old Aiyana Jones was shot and killed by police during a raid filmed for a cable show, experts are asking whether the officers responded to the cameras with violence. […]
Spain’s surprisingly advanced renewable energy sector is facing obstacles like government cutbacks, ever-changing regulations and a retracting European economy.
“More than 60 percent of U.S. cancer deaths are caused by smoking and diet. But what about the rest?” asks Scientific American. New studies are seeking the environmental causes of cancer.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” says Barry Goldman at the L.A. Times, frustrated by tech support’s insufficient understanding of modern gizmos.
Jeff Jarvis defends publicness, as opposed to privacy, amid the Google and Facebook privacy debacles as a way of protecting an open society and preserving the Internet as a public good.
The rise of middle power states with nuclear ambitions like Iran, Brazil and Turkey must be tolerated if the West hopes to maintain a credible non-proliferation regime, says a former CIA chief.