“NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered a whopping 706 candidate planets beyond the solar system,” says Science News. The find nearly doubles the amount of known planets outside our solar system.
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Should the government continue to give loans to students who attend for-profit colleges given their high dropout and loan default rates? Gary Becker and Richard Posner weigh in on the debate.
“Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think,” says Bryan Caplan at The Wall Street Journal.
“The question is not, ‘Are video games art?’ The question is, ‘Can artists express themselves through the video-game medium?'” says journalist and gamer Tom Bissell.
CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN. See more photos from the 2010 Coney Island Mermaid Parade. The Mermaid Parade marks the beginning of summer in Brooklyn. The most popular theme for costumes and […]
The blithe feathers of our nation’s patrimony are now literally weighed down by oil, but our government and press already exude the sticky toxins of petroleum. In a sense, petroleum […]
Two days ago the streets of the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, played host to a thundering parade of military hardware, as the Government of President Mahindra Rajapaksa celebrated the […]
Alan Gilbert, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, stopped by Big Think’s offices Friday afternoon to talk about his work as a conductor, about what he hears when […]
Following the entry of “happiness studies” into psychology through the last two decades, some are now asking if being perpetually elated is truly good for your health.
It seems America cannot escape its racial past: “‘Resegregation is a national trend [that has been building] for over a decade,’ says John C. Brittain, a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia.”
“In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown,” says The Guardian. The English daily looks at where the Net is taking us.
Is decriminalizing marijuana while leaving anti-drug laws on the books a bad idea? Does it allow police to selectively enforce law and create contempt among the public? The Economist weighs in.
The Financial Times appeals to an Oxford philosophy professor to find the essence of beauty. Darwin said it was sex. For Estée Lauder, it was glamor. But what does beauty mean today?
“What happens to our civic life when we’re all too scared to participate?” asks Slate. Expert witnesses have recently refused to testify in court, fearing reprisal for divulging their political views.
As summer is upon us, what does psychological research tell us about how we spend our leisure time? The answers could provide for a more enjoyable vacation in the coming months.
“The nature and depth of the financial crisis is forcing us to reconsider some of the basic tenets of financial theory,” says Paul Volcker who maps his ideas for reform in The NY Review of Books.
The New Statesman ruminates on what democracy might look like in an Islamic republic, what Eastern countries are tending that way, and why the West must make tough compromises.
“When something is free, you tend to use more of it. It’s true for buffets and open bars, and it’s the same with carbon,” says The Atlantic while advocating for a carbon tax to slow global warming.
Walking through the Late Renoirexhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art recently, I couldn’t help but be struck by the power of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s paintings of his three sons—Pierre, Jean, […]
Personally, I remember back in the 1970s when string theory fell out of favor. At the time, it was very difficult to get a job and many people dismissed the […]
On Thursday, Republicans blocked an attempt to lift the liability cap for oil companies for the fourth time. Although BP has agreed to establish a $20 billion fund to pay […]
We imagine spying in terms of cutting edge technology and clandestine intrigue, but a lot of important intelligence work involves more mundane strategies like reading newspapers. In recent years, cash-strapped […]
I spend a lot of time on my laptop. Too much time? Don’t know, don’t care. C’est la vie (moderne), etc. But what does irk me is that I’m stuck […]
When Facebook’s privacy woes hit the webosphere, people quickly fell into two camps: those who believed that we now “live in public” and should accept it, and those who were […]
“Fog in Channel, Continent isolated” is one of the better remembered British newspaper front page headlines, but as the new Coalition Government here in London takes its swingeing axe to […]
“The causes of underfunded pensions are similar throughout the developed world,” says the L.A. Times while commenting on France’s recent move to increase the retirement age.
The Big Money shines light on for-profit colleges that take federal money but use far more revenue for recruitment and marketing than for educating their students—a higher education crisis?
Physicists have developed an experiment involving super cold matter and an empty elevator shaft that will test one concept crucial to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
“Reality is already outpacing ‘Minority Report,’ the 2002 film that imagined technology in far-off 2054: Pre-crime systems, 3D video and gesture-based computing are already here,” says The New York Times.
Miller-McCune reports that, “Using artificial intelligence and the graphics techniques behind ‘Avatar,’ a USC institute creates ‘virtual humans’ and interactive immersions that train American soldiers.”