“Physicians say presentations they make are educational, but critics say the practice puts financial rewards ahead of patient care.” The L.A. Times on doctors who moonlight as drug reps.
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“Can the innovative ‘do-it-yourself’ education movement really replace the dying university model?” Alan Jacobs says universities are decadent outposts in austere times.
“The emotional roller coaster captured on Twitter can predict the ups and downs of the stock market, a new study finds.” Wired Science on the unexpected correlation.
Princeton professor of bioethics Peter Singer says emotional and rational evaluations of ethical dilemmas are distinct and that they produce different outcomes.
“If you are green or broke, as many people are these days, buying seems wasteful.” The Economist says people are growing impatient with ‘idle capacity’, i.e. waste.
“Genetically engineering crops and trees could enhance the process of carbon sequestration, trapping gigatons of the greenhouse gas as well as increasing bioenergy production.”
“Why does a melancholy mood turn us into a better artist? The answer returns us to the intertwined nature of emotion and cognition.” The Frontal Cortex on creativity.
Art is good for the soul, but sometimes it can be bad for your health. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds installation at the Tate Modern in London aroused curiosity […]
So, the folks here at Bigthink have been working on improving commenting for Eruptions (and all the BT blogs). I am happy to say that we’ve had a number of […]
I’ve just run into brief reports about a new “eruption” in Colombia – but not the normal kind of eruption. Now, the one of the articles in English that I […]
With all its inefficiencies, waste and contradictions, democracy may not be equal to our social problems. But it sure is a great model of the human psyche, as writers keep […]
On Thursday, the National Academies will be holding the second in a series of roundtable events on climate change education. Registration is open to the public. In a white paper […]
Ever since he came out to the public in February 2007, former NBA player John Amaechi says he has been “that big gay guy.” But there is much more to […]
Tracy Clark-Flory interviews porn performer and producer Madison Young about condoms in porn. Young argues that individual performers should be allowed to decide whether to use condoms on set: CLARK-FLORY: […]
Scientific innovation is desperately needed to solve our most pressing problems but how scientists get money for their research stifles, rather than spurs, creativity.
“Mental tenacity — and the ability to manage and even thrive on and push through pain — is a key segregator between the mortals and immortals in running.”
“It is easy to talk about great ideas as if they were light-bulb moments, sudden epiphanies where everything comes together at once…but that’s rarely how it works.”
George Monbiot says financial crisis cuts in the U.K. are being used to “reshape the economy in the interests of business – and to trash the public sector.”
“WikiLeaks isn’t the problem. It’s reams of unnecessarily classified documents that remain hidden from the public eye by overzealous intelligence officials.”
“Developing nations need much stronger incentives to regard their biodiversity as wealth to be preserved, rather than a resource to be processed in the pursuit of growth.”
Joanna Weiss on Meg Whitman being called a whore: “You have to have been living in a 1940s movie not to know that the word is now applied in a gender-neutral way.”
Lucid dreaming — the premise for Hollywood blockbuster Inception — is real and becoming more common, experts believe.
On the impact of the increased cost of health labor John C. Goodman predicts: “Huge labor market upheaval and high unemployment, looking indefinitely into the future.”
Karl Rove says the presidential campaign will focus on two broad issues: the way somebody governs and the way in which they act; their persona and their agenda.
We have long wanted to create a neuron-by-neuron map of the brain’s circuitry to give us a 3-D glimpse into its connections are, how they work and how the different […]
Sady Doyle has a piece in the Atlantic about how the latest case of HIV in the porn industry has revived public concern about the lack of condoms in straight […]
While in many parts of the world today women enjoy greater power and opportunity than ever before, there are also places where women remain essentially powerless, lacking access to even basic education or human rights.
Until she was 10 years old, performance artist Marina Abramović believed her parents when they told her that her birthday was November 29th, “Republic Day” in her native Yugoslavia. They […]
For a growing number of Americans—including many in the military—October 31st is returning to its Celtic and pre-Christian roots.
Malcolm Hartley is an Australian astronomer who is best known for his discovery of 5 comets during the 1980s. He has been invited to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California […]