“It will never be a substitute for proper carbon-taxing, but eco-labelling is a development to be welcomed.”
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The recession has not torn young couples apart; it has pushed them closer together. Marriage and divorce rates have remained remarkably immune to the business cycle.
“Maintaining a diverse media is a crucial underpinning of democracy. As for Murdoch, the sun has shone and he has made hay. It is time he heard a regulator knocking at his door.”
“In fairy tales, ‘good’ triumphs over ‘evil,’ but how this happens isn’t simple. It’s quite common for traditional fairy tales to have complicated, even troubling, conclusions.”
Dating research shows that when we are free to choose our conversation topics we gravitate toward an easy to maintain balance that no one actually enjoys or benefits from.
Would it be a classic pearl handled six shooter? A double barreled shotgun with a hand carved stock? An AK-47 semi-automatic assault carbine with laser sights? Or would he simply […]
“What happens if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it?” Willard Spiegelman asks intriguingly in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. “What happens if […]
Excellent: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin (D) have introduced legislation to require so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” in New York City to disclose that they are not […]
Tension was evident as humanists and atheists gathered this weekend, reported Mitchell Landsberg at the Los Angeles Times. At issue among the attendees at the annual conference of the Council […]
New evidence from speed-dating trials helps untangle the reasons why segregation persists in dating and marriage.
Being a college professor has definitely made me realize how many students are “terrified” (their words) about math and science. Many have gotten the idea that you need to be […]
“American foreign policy stands on the brink of substantial belt-tightening.” Professor of American Foreign Policy Michael Mandelbaum on the effects of the recession.
One problem with making public policy on marijuana is the drug’s unpredictable effects: dosage amount, the person and the state they are in upon consumption vary widely.
“When Democrats jump onto China bashing, they miss the real causes of the recession, and worse, legitimize us-vs.-them thinking.” Robert Reich on global economics.
“Ellington had many of the traits one associates more readily with the founders of religious orders or political movements than with lone artists absorbed in self-expression.”
“Scientists have shown what many dog owners have suspected—while some canines are joyfully optimistic about life, others have a tendency for gloomy pessimism.”
Doctors have injected human embryonic stem cells into a patient partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, marking the beginning of the promising but controversial therapy.
“The process of speaking two or more languages appears to enable skills to better cope with the early symptoms of memory-robbing diseases, including Alzheimer’s.”
In Germany, utility companies pay homeowners and businesses for power generated by alternative energies that is fed into the electricity grid. Should the U.S. take note?
“Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career that he kept largely hidden from view but that rivaled and sometimes surpassed his devotion to celestial mechanics.”
“Peter Diamond’s Nobel prize in economics is an unusual example of useful economics combined with timely politics.” The Guardian on the would-be government appointee.
“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over [Australia] in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, […]
“I tend to think of the exhibitions I do as a loose accumulation of paintings with no single theme—like a variety show,” artist Glenn Brown said in 2007. “A comedy […]
When a major earthquake struck Haiti in January, it caused unbelievable damage and many created a humanitarian nightmare. But it also served as a wake-up call for other Caribbean nations […]
At the heart of every galaxy like our own Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole, but scientists are unsure which develops first.
Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle says that teenagers who are raped should make lemonade out of lemons by bearing their attackers’ children. Angle is one of several senate candidates who […]
Not every scientific paper is great work, as any scientist will tell you. But shoddy work gets ignored or quickly debunked. There is an enormous incentive for scientists to debunk […]
Over at the NY Times’s Green blog, Todd Woody has an update on the Proposition 23 race, reporting that environmentalists opposed to the ballot measure have opened a sizable fund-raising […]
Physicist and Big Think blogger Michio Kaku is the closest thing the world has to real-life wizard. With his shocking white hair, he makes prophesies about fantastic technologies that science […]
Rep Bruce Braley (D-Ia) paid a visit to the “headquarters,” of the American Future Fund, a shadowy 501(c)4 group that has spent nearly $1 million to defeat him in the […]