As intellectuals go, B.F. Skinner was pretty dismissive of intellectuals—at least the insufficiently hard-nosed and scientific ones who blathered unproductively about “freedom” and “dignity.”
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China’s rise as the world’s second-largest economy highlights a new postindustrial reality: Population counts as much as productivity in determining economic power.
The last time valuations soared so high for companies like Groupon and Facebook with modest track records, or no track records, the trend line heralded the dot-com crash.
What happens when a Hollywood heartthrob and the art world collide? Berlin is about to find out as it plays host to James Franco’s first ever commercial gallery show.
The funny thing about all these frothy millions and billions piling up around social media sites and The Huffington Post? Most of the value was created by people working free.
This week, Watson takes on humans at “Jeopardy!” But how close are we to a computer that thinks? Google’s director of research explains how far we’ve come.
Will a Middle Eastern oil disruption crush the economy? New research suggests the answer is no—and that a major tenet of American foreign policy may be fundamentally wrong.
Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity.
Among the newly proposed federal budget cuts is $1.1 billion from the Department of Energy Office of Science which funds the majority of physics research at universities and national labs.
Is the exchange of amorous declarations between partners now forever delegated to the insulting greetings card and the wholly unpassionate email?
The Yemen expert gives a quick snapshot of the most important things you need to know about the country teetering on the brink of revolt.
Kanye West‘s album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came out too late to be nominated for the Grammy Awards being held tonight, so we’ll have to wait until next year […]
This Valentine’s Day Nobel prize-winning economist Michael Spence explains how the concept of economic signaling can help you nab your true love—whether or not you’re Lloyd Dobbler from 80s romance flick “Say Anything.”
My favorite films are ones like The Little Foxes, or Twelve Angry Men, or Glengarry Glen Ross, all movies that were adapted from plays to the big screen. The Sunset […]
Compare your level of romance to the national average for 48 different countries, and see where in the world you would best fit in romantically.
Even as crime rates have gone down around the country over the last 20 years, our fear of crime hasn’t changed much. Between 1990 and 2009, the national violent-crime rate was halved.
Extra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed up by the world’s smartest physicists include untold numbers of extra universes.
When it comes to grief and loss, America is no longer a nation of stoics; we are a nation of feelers. But is our expression of grief helping or hurting our ability to heal?
Hollywood writer and director Paul Haggis resigned from the Church of Scientology saying that, for the first time, he had explored outside perspectives on the church.
It’s a dismal view, but the main reason why we have Valentine’s Day is to stimulate commerce. However, it’s not obvious that a day created to stimulate commerce really stimulates.
The director of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for “Superman” reflects on how life’s path has a strange and wonderful way of catching up with us—no matter where we go.
How veiled is our language? Euphemisms can be private or public, trivial or deadly, serious or joky—but they can’t be dispensed with, says Ralph Keyes in his new book.
In the high-stakes arena of Google search results, some companies game the system in order to get high traffic. But Google insists there are standards in search engine optimization.
Why the jobless recovery? Our scientists and technologists have not been able to create inventions that can be industrialised at the same pace as they once did.
Thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the Algerian capital Algiers on Saturday, defying a ban on demonstrations and calling for political reform in the North African country.
So for the slow weekend, I thought I’d stick in some more thoughts of movies I saw a year or so ago, before I became a BIG THINKer. I saw A Single […]
With Time magazine’s recent cover story on futurist Ray Kurzweil, his theories about the singularity have entered the mainstream. Now hear them straight from the source.
Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln held seances in the White House trying to contact the spirit of their dead son Willie. Or was it a calculated political move?
Today, the morning after, it is time to ask ourselves some questions about what comes next for the Middle East, especially in Yemen, the base of operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Ittihad, a newspaper from the UAE, has a story out today that claims Said Ali al-Shihri was killed when a bomb he was assembling exploded, killing him and wounding five […]