Energy producers who met with skyrocketing food prices and international protests while using food crops to create large quantities of biofuels are now eyeing inedible waste.
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A cache of René Magritte’s personal letters are set to be auctioned soon at Sotheby’s, reports the Economist; the French surrealist was “unremittingly cheery” in his correspondence.
After three men who each believed he was Jesus Christ were made to live together as a psychological experiment, psychologists better understand the nature and limits of identity.
Do the similarities between the Black Panthers of the ’60s and today’s TEA Party run deeper than guns, anger and demand for limited government?
“English has been a language of occupiers and imperialists, but also one of insurgents and democrats,” writes Isaac Chotiner. The New Yorker discusses the new lingua franca.
“China, Russia and the U.S., as permanent members of the security council, are holding themselves above the law,” says Amnesty International in a new report.
“The camera is a weapon. The camera can be a machine gun. It can be a psychoanalytical couch. It can be a warm kiss,” opines Henri Cartier-Bresson in The Decisive […]
How dangerous can media consolidation get? According to one writer, it can be deadly. In his book Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, Eric Klinenberg describes how […]
Three years ago, five-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter had a pulmonary embolism that threatened her life. She recounts her time in the ER as an incredibly frightening experience, and […]
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, stopped by the Big Think offices this afternoon to talk to us about his new book “Cognitive […]
In March, Sunlight Labs announced Design for America — a 10-week design and data visualization contest aiming to connect the creative community with the increasing amounts of public data produced […]
Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, announced today that he is putting down his pen. In his column, he talks about what he’s learned over the past […]
It looks like the internet forecasters were optimistic when they designed the current IP address architecture known as IPv4. They figured 4 billion addresses would be enough. But this was […]
Standardized tests are supposed to measure innate abilities. The subject of your last conversation, the lead story on the news last night, the pictures on the wall at the test […]
With the popularity of the Internet and self-publishing, Garrison Keillor laments the end of the glamorous age of publishing from a rooftop in Tribeca.
The strange behavior of two suppermassive black holes may change the way scientists understand the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
Robert Fisk thinks that political speak has taken over journalism and that accuracy of fact has become dominated by competing historical narratives that favor power over truth.
The Australian anthropologist Sarah Thornton has completed a study of the art world and traced its hierarchies and status-seekers just as she did the London party scene.
The incomprehensibility of quantum physics is responsible for the rise of postmodern social theories which reject the notion of a stable, immutable truth.
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.
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.