“Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert inspired to hold rally for sanity in Washington DC after Reddit online campaign.” The Guardian reveals the source of the comedians’ fountain.
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“The religious sect that rejects modern life is spreading from its traditional heartlands, but scandals are damaging its benign image.” The Independent profiles the Amish.
“Nick Cave’s most recent band has just released a second record strong enough to make ‘side project’ seem like an inaccurate description.” The New Yorker reviews the album and the man.
“A new report argues that the world has plenty of uranium but needs to make wise choices about what to do with it once its been depleted in a nuclear reactor.”
“Even within the seemingly homogeneous sphere of the university English department, a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing.”
“People vary in their locations in social networks in part, we think, because there is no one location that is best, for us as individuals or for us as a species.”
“A Wall Street Journal investigation has found that popular children’s websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults.”
“People consider work of just about any kind to be better than no work at all, and it improves their mental health in most cases, several studies have found.” The L.A. Times reports.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” may come up for a vote after all. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to bring the 2011 defense authorization bill, which contains a provision […]
Princeton philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah stopped by the Big Think offices this past week to talk how the concept of “honor” can be mobilized as a force for change. […]
Confidence is a trait typically cast as a higher-order function in the brain. It’s at once the act of making a decision, recognizing the decision as thought, and measuring the […]
After successfully employing Islamic law in the U.S. court system, a writer at Guernica realizes that Sharia and feminism aren’t always mutually exclusive.
“How do we use the technologies of computation, statistics and networking to shed light—without killing the magic?” Jaron Lanier asks if digital classrooms are good for education.
How does the brain figure out what it doesn’t know? Scientists say introspection, the process of the brain cross-examining itself, requires more gray matter and more neural connections.
“The Obama administration has been tardy to tackle economic misery, but looks set to lose to a GOP that would do even less.” Who will tackle America’s poverty problem?
A small dose of Prozac has been found effective at treating the physical and mental pains of premenstrual syndrome and could be widely available within two years, The Independent reports.
“In 1960 a spirited animal lover with no scientific training set up camp to observe chimpanzees. Today Jane Goodall’s name is synonymous with the protection of the species.”
“The World Trade Organization has found that much of the $22 billion benefit Boeing enjoyed from tax breaks and defence and research contracts was also an illegal subsidy.”
“Immersive theatre is billed as a thrilling and intimate alternative to traditional drama, but it smacks of triviality and low-level fascism.” Prospect magazine on the steadiest theater trend.
“In regions scarred by intractable poverty, innovative programs to build new sources of wealth through these four businesses are providing lessons for entrepreneurs.”
“The next X PRIZE competition, the Google Lunar X PRIZE, is offering $60 million to land a robotic rover on the moon and use it to complete certain objectives.”
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” reads Hebrews 11:1 in the King James Bible. Attempts to give faith tangible form here […]
In last month’s Harper’s, Gary Greenberg writes in “The War on Happiness: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive Thinking,” that, increasingly and unavoidably, the concept of enlightenment via sitting in a room […]
As usual, California is the battlefront for energy and climate change issues. Oil refiners Valero and Tesoro have spent $5.5 million dollars in support of California’s Proposition 23, which would […]
How is it that we’re able to focus on a distant conversation while ignoring the person who is speaking right in front of us? Tony Zador, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, breaks down the brain mechanisms that allow us to have selective auditory attention.
There’s no such thing as a verbatim, facsimile memory, says USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. When we reconstruct events in our minds, we are pulling together set sequences of specific details stored in different parts of the brain.
Random acts of kindness have been shown to increase everything from self-esteem to happiness level. At the same time, the paradox of choice is known to increase our cognitive load […]
Delusions of control seem built into the human mind, even when they aren’t comforting. More than a few people, for example, would prefer to think hurricanes are punishments for abortions […]
“Positive psychology is a movement in social psychology which attempts to change the way that we think about humans,” explains positive psychology expert Shawn Achor. “Instead of focusing merely on […]
Politico reports that senior Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are trying to sell lobbyists for the energy and telecom industries on the idea that the Republicans will […]