“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously […]
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Remember the 1960s? It was a decade so radical that even the President of the United States could publically declare that public funding of contraceptives would increase economic prosperity. Lyndon […]
While he does not do drugs himself, Penn Jillette also does not believe other people should go to jail for “victimless crimes,” pointing out that 1 in 6 people in prison in the U.S. today are “in there for weed.”
Big-idea start ups are not dead, says GigaOm’s Derrick Harris. They’ve just moved to the cloud, where scalable technology allows companies–and individuals–to innovate like never before.
I’ve always suspected, to paraphrase an adage from evolutionary science, that the marriage replicates the wedding. The wedding’s style is a germinal expression of the marriage to come, its strengths, […]
The preservation of individuals’ online profiles after their physical death extends their life in a very meaningful sense, says Australian philosopher Patrick Stokes.
A quiet suburban street set in the leafy suburbs of Cheadle, Manchester, Northern England on Monday, witnessed a coming together of a former Leader of Manchester City Council, Labour MP Graham Stringer […]
A new tech start up wants to use a mobile app to create a worldwide network for real-time language translation. Its creators say the system is the next-best thing to the singularity.
Congress is apparently now speaking at a 10th grade level. The Sunlight Foundation recentlyanalyzed the Congressional Record and found that the average member of Congress speaks at 10.6 grade reading level on the […]
The first thing that came to mind when I finished Predator Nation, the book by Charles Ferguson that explains how Wall Street’s elite brazenly commit financial crimes out in the […]
Facebook banked $16 billion on its initial public offering, so why are market analysts disappointed? Perhaps because the company threatens the dominance of the stock market itself.
On Tuesday, May 22, I will be delivering a lecture as part of the National Academies’ Sackler Colloquium on the “Science of Science Communication,” reviewing the role of the media […]
The U.S. Navy’s Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) is designed to crowdsource ideas and strategies to best meet future energy demands.
A Chinese flag, not an American one, will be planted in the lunar dust when the next manned mission to the moon occurs some time around 2025. Scientific teams in […]
The self is a disruptive, false, and, as such, unnecessary metaphor for the process of awareness and knowing: when we awaken to knowing, we realize that all that goes on in us is a flow of “thoughts without a thinker.”
The blind 40-year-old Chinese dissident who escaped from house arrest in April — improbably evading guards, finding his way to the U.S. embassy in Beijing and, after a diplomatic fracas, acquiring a visa to study law in the United States — landed at Newark Liberty airport on Saturday. Less than a month after fleeing his village in Shandong Province, Chen Guangcheng and his family are free in Greenwich Village. The question is whether they are here for good.
Scientists have hoped that one day people with severe forms of paralysis could use brain-computer interfaces to perform tasks to better their lives. That day has now come.
On this blog, I often write about so-called controversial topics, which test people’s moral convictions: If you agree about abortion, you should agree about infanticide; there are no good reasons […]
What’s the Big Idea? Before neuroscience and quantum physics, there was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The 19th century German idealist revolutionized Western thought, and every great thinker since has been working […]
Today we’re pleased to announce our second Big Think Book of the Month, the dazzlingly ambitious Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, out May 22, 2012 from […]
The agreement in which Iraq will purchase surveillance drones from the U.S. is the latest in an effort to help keep oil terminals within the Iraqi territory in the Persian Gulf safe. In turn, it allows the United States to strengthen its ties to the country.
The reoccurring topic in the midst of the economic crisis effecting countries around the world is derivatives trading. It is a risk financial institutions take that has no benefit to customers, and can cause an outcome that will throw an economy into financial disorder.
Kevin Kelly’s “What Technology Wants” is one of the most important books I’ve read in the past decade. If you’re at all involved in technology innovation, it’s required reading. I […]
Women’s equality and health are the focus of Republican criticism. Republicans are determined to weaken the welfare of women.
The Chinese view social debates among Americans as unethical and immoral behavior. They believe issues such as gay marriage and abortion should remain out of the public eye.
I’ve read nothing more heartwarming recently than the excerpts from young Obama’s love letters in the new Vanity Fair. The glow they exude has nothing to do with romance and […]
There are just 30 people worldwide whose brain injuries have rewired their brains in ways that allow them to perform amazing feats. But now a machine replicates the process with some success.
New research has found a genetic link between exercise and brain performance, implying that physical activity could treat disorders like ADD and ADHD, especially during youth.
To soften the feeling of pain, distract your mind with another task. Researchers say that investing mental energy elsewhere keeps your nervous system from receiving pain signals.
Financial companies are putting a halt to the type of banking services provided to the clientele of America’s elite. The act is an effort to avoid the possible aid in further tax evasion.