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For individual birds affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, having a person clean the oil from their feathers may be their best chance of survival.
A team of the print world’s brightest innovators set out to write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in just two days.
How many times have you felt guilty when someone talks about the grand crises in the world: water, energy, food, poverty? You assiduously recycle your bottles, cans and paper, but have a nagging feeling you should be doing something more. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s hard to help when you don’t understand the exact nature of the problem. Now there’s a way: games. Or to be more accurate, serious games. Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron but serious games are becoming the most popular tool to engage citizens to collaborate and solve world challenges.
A growing number of artists are “rummaging through the life sciences in search of materials, ideas, cosmic verities, tragicomic homilies, personal agency, a personal agent, a way to stand out in the crowd.”
“How could a writer whose prose breathed in life so fully take his own?” asks Michael O’Donnell of David Foster Wallace. A new book tries to illuminate the writer via a five-day road trip.
The idea that one’s disposition can be analyzed by looking at their handwriting is considered spurious, yet medical graphology—the use of handwriting to detect disease—has diagnostic validity.
Time “flows at different speeds in different places and that is the key to traveling into the future,” writes Stephen Hawking, who speculates about how we might construct a time machine.
Scientists have discovered that shooting high-powered lasers into the sky can create the germ of a rain cloud, opening the door to eco-friendly cloud manipulation.
When it comes to compliments “we often hear what we want to hear,” writes Elizabeth Bernstein. If we are feeling secure it’s easy to register the praise, but not in times of self-doubt.
Today marks the first installment of Big Think’s newest series, “Moments of Genius,” sponsored by Intel. We sat down with math and science thought leaders—from the inventor of the very […]
“The secret of excellent proofreading is caring intensely about getting things right and loathing error with an intensity that perhaps only fascism or an alimony-collecting ex-wife deserves,” writes Joseph Epstein.
“Europe used to be, within the living memory of many of us, the cockpit of world power, prosperity and prestige. Today it is raw material for an ouija board,” writes Walter Lacquer.
While acknowledging the progress over the past 50 years that was enabled by birth control pills, Geraldine Sealey thinks we now need new methods beyond hormonal contraception.
Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton writes that “It is hard to conclude anything except that the Obama administration is resigned to Iran possessing nuclear weapons.”
New studies indicate that combining exercise activities (like walking or biking) with nature—even for just five minutes—can boost mental health and well-being.