Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s HARPS telescope have studied over 100 nearby red dwarf stars over the last six years. 40 percent of these common stars were observed to wobble, a […]
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What is the Big Idea? Back in the 16th century, a group of rural and urban weavers who worked in the Black Forest mountain range of Germany formed a guild […]
What’s the Big Idea? Sometimes you have to be bad in the service of being good, say coauthors and cofounders Frances Frei (a professor at Harvard Business School) and Anne […]
Editorial note: This is a guest post by Faisal Saeed Al-Mutar, the 20 year old Iraqi founder of the Global Secular Humanist Movement – a forum for the discussion of rational […]
It looks like the Supreme Court may well declare unconstitutional at least the “mandate” part of “Obamacare.” This astute observer explains why Justice Kennedy’s understanding of the relevant issue makes […]
You might think the debate over the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act is a classic confrontation between state power and individual liberty, big government liberalism versus minimal state […]
One of my favorite books on leadership is The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. You can read my […]
The super-Earths discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission may be better at supporting life than Earth itself, says the Harvard astronomer who coined the term super-Earth.
When density perturbations in space cause it to collapse, black holes are created in a range of sizes. Some are extremely small and could pass straight through the Earth.
There is only one measure of time that matters to the current Internet generation: the here and now. The Cult of Now is influencing everything that we do and every […]
One of Earth Platinum’s 31 copies could be yours for a mere $100,000
Read Part 2 here. I’ve talked about the weather, the crowds, the protesters and the speakers, and I wanted to end up with some overall impressions. One of the things […]
What is the Big Idea? The slums of Sangli, a city in southwestern India, is nothing more than a patch of blank space on a map. But thanks to Google […]
Facebook says employers who request applicants’ passwords will face ‘unanticipated legal challenges’. What does that mean, exactly? Would you hand your password over for a job?
No matter the job, institutions increasingly require applicants to maintain an online presence, whether than means managing content, tweaking a website’s design or writing code in earnest.
Email overload is linked to decreased productivity, an inability to focus on important tasks, even emotional and physical stress. Activity streams, a potential alternative, are gaining popularity.
Very often, the most creative things happen in the most implausible places, such as the creation of the first electronic digital computer at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
On Sunday, Andrew Sullivan offered a passage from Marilynne Robinson’s new book, When I Was A Child I Read Books, as excerpted in Guernica: Jefferson says that we are endowed with […]
How would you describe the Republican candidates? A Washington Post/Pew Research poll conducted two weeks ago asked respondents what one word came to mind when they heard the name of […]
What’s the Big Idea? Want to scare a book publisher, a record store owner, or even a doctor? Creep up behind her and shout: disintermediation! This is the term du […]
Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Robert Greenberg — pianist, music historian, and author of How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and […]
The Being Human Conference, which took place at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts this weekend, was designed to explore the science of human experience. The speakers ranged from neuroscientists, […]
My household has split opinions on the new Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC. I think it is amazing that a national news show has a black woman with braided hair […]
By Ahmed El Hady In our neuro-centric world-view, a person is equated to his brain. The neuro-discourse has penetrated all aspects of our lives from law to politics to literature […]
By turning super computers loose on massive amounts of data, companies are able to make more informed decisions, but making decisions based on computer output can be humbling.
PayPal is coming to a store near you. In fact, PayPal may be building a store near you. The online payment company wants to bring its ideas to physical stores, changing how we use money.
Andy Warhol had his Campbell’s Soup Cans and Roy Lichtenstein had his comic book panels, but what will be the Pop artmeme of today? One possible candidate is the ubiquitous […]
Read Part 1 here. Before I deliver my recap of the speakers at the Reason Rally, I need to give a shout-out to the people who accompanied me for the […]
What is the Big Idea? Effective next year, brothels in Ontario, Canada will be able to operate legally and sex workers will be allowed to hire security for protection, according […]
Given the large number of orphaned children in the world, I can see no reason why people should create children. Secondly, a failure to become adoptive parents is not sufficient reason to then procreate.