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A bill recently passed by California legislators would establish standards for “affirmative consent” with regard to sexual activity on college campuses. “Yes Means Yes” could be influential to other states’ legislators if it survives initial litigation.

Should homeless Americans be entitled to 24/7 access to restrooms? An increasing number of advocates are pushing the issue to the forefront of homeless-rights discussions.

Data matters. It’s important to harness data to find more efficient ways to operate. But making data a higher priority than your workforce is extremely unwise.

Rather than maintain its landlines, the university is opting to subsidize cell phones for employees at its new online learning initiative.

If we came to be just a few billion years earlier, we’d never know. Image credit: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT) & Giovanni Anselmi (Coelum Astronomia), Hawaiian Starlight. “After all the ‘Universe’ […]

Neuroscientists fascinated by the teenage psyche have come together to publish a series of studies on what makes juveniles tick. Their findings reveal why teenage boys in particular act in such a risk-averse manner.

While you can’t prevent your financial institution from being breached by hackers, you can still protect your information by not falling into their traps.

Everyone knows there are two things you never bring up in conversation—politics and religion. In this secular age chock full of wars fought over one faith or another, many never […]

In my post last week I linked to some work by Evan Selinger, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology who has been thinking hard about the ways seemingly […]

There are six cardinal rules that can determine if your viral campaign will be successful or not: clarity, ease, immediacy, multiplicity, versatility, and the ability to make participants feel good about themselves for having taken part.

Sometimes the best way to combat stress is to examine it not as a mysterious toxin but as a tangible, solvable equation.

Bill Nye, everyone’s favorite Science Guy, recently visited Big Think to talk SpaceX, NASA, and the budding space tourism industry.  Would Bill jump at the chance to visit space? You […]

“Companies that model best practices, that model the most upstanding principles, end up as the most profitable. It’s not a trade of profits versus principles.” –Philip Zimbardo, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and Founder of […]

“Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.” Aung San […]

This photo was snapped by Marco Belluci in Kalabougu, Mali.  His description: Kalabougou is a village located across the Niger river from Ségou (Mali). The village is known for its […]

August 30, 1984: the Space Shuttle Discovery launches from Kennedy Space Center on its maiden voyage. STS-41-D was NASA’s 12th Space Shuttle mission. One mission’s crew members was Judith Resnik, who […]

It’s not looking good in the Golden State right now: According to the U.S. Drought Monitor (shown below), the entire state is currently experiencing at least “moderate drought,” with 95% […]

What every middle-to-high schooler should know. Image credit: Bayside STEM academy, via Stanford at https://ed.stanford.edu/news/new-design-thinking-curriculum-targets-middle-school-students. “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time […]

Not only are supercomputers able to perform research at a quicker pace than scientists, their processes offer a unique approach to culling information. Because of this, supercomputers are capable of making discoveries that scientists can’t. 

Beyond the simple advice of “start putting more away,” optimizing when you start collecting social security can help you save more in the long run. 

From 1974 through 1981, Haruki Murakami ran a jazz club in Tokyo, Japan, and wondered what direction his life would run. After long soul searching, his life ran in the […]

Many companies ramp up their hiring after September. Network early and often to get on hiring managers’ radars before they get going.

Will Self argues that crowdfunding is doomed. He says eventually the crowd will wise up that people are really just begging for money. His argument is based on someone who […]

While ambiguity and shades of gray tend not fit the paradigm of technological solutions, they represent the arts’ most powerful capabilities: to express life with all its complexities. 

There’s plenty of gas, dust, planets and rocky bodies out there. Could some combination of them explain dark matter? Image credit: Chris Blake and Sam Moorfield, via http://www.sdss3.org/surveys/boss.php. “When a […]

Physics for babies is a big deal.

An early feminist, Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is best known as the author of the classic American children’s novel, Little Women. The above quote is from her 1870 novel An Old-Fashioned […]

The concept of an Internet “troll” is puzzling, if you think about it. No non-digital troll relishes anonymity or sneakily provokes or harrasses others with snarky comments. Trolls in literature […]

Sleazy, ugly, and gross are all words that come to mind when the word sales comes up. The question is, why do we shy away from a process that is […]

In what is now known in online circles as “Black Friday,” the U.S. Department of Justice imposed a heavy crackdown on major online gambling sites on April 11, 2011. Since then, American online gamblers have gotten creative in how they bypass regulations.