Today we take a computer’s speed for granted, but it wasn’t so long ago when it was normal to sit and wait for several minutes every time we booted up […]
All Articles
The relationship between art and society has been deconstructed for what seems like forever. But as the definition of art and performance has broadened over time, some members of society […]
Achieving sustainability can be a tricky balance for businesses. Even if adopting sustainable practices makes clear sense for the long-term, Copenhagen Business School professor Bjørn Lomborg notes that businesses face […]
“What Bert Sugar doesn’t know about baseball, nobody knows,” reads a quote from the great Yankees catcher Yogi Berra on the back of Sugar’s new book about the Baseball Hall […]
In a press conference yesterday, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is planning to make it much simpler for users to figure out how much information they are making […]
Urban studies theorist Richard Florida came by the Big Think offices recently to talk about what he’s coined “The Great Reset”—the effects of the economic crisis on our country, and […]
A pair of Canadian paleontologists say that anigmatic fossilized organism called Nectocaris pteryx (literally “swimming crab with wings”) was the great-grandmammy of the modern-day squid, octopus, and cuttlefish: In the […]
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and Judge Richard Posner consider whether a central bank like the Federal Reserve should remain independent of the government.
Do men have the right to choose? After being divorced and sued for child support, one man testifies that he and his ex-wife had agreed to get an abortion if she became pregnant.
A lifetime ban on donating blood for men who have slept with other men, created to protect recipients from HIV, is being challenged as outdated and unfair by two Canadian physicians.
The C.I.A. planned to shoot separate mock, gay sex tapes implicating Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden in an attempt to delegitimize the men’s authority, according to The Guardian.
Energy producers who met with skyrocketing food prices and international protests while using food crops to create large quantities of biofuels are now eyeing inedible waste.
A cache of René Magritte’s personal letters are set to be auctioned soon at Sotheby’s, reports the Economist; the French surrealist was “unremittingly cheery” in his correspondence.
After three men who each believed he was Jesus Christ were made to live together as a psychological experiment, psychologists better understand the nature and limits of identity.
Do the similarities between the Black Panthers of the ’60s and today’s TEA Party run deeper than guns, anger and demand for limited government?
“English has been a language of occupiers and imperialists, but also one of insurgents and democrats,” writes Isaac Chotiner. The New Yorker discusses the new lingua franca.
“China, Russia and the U.S., as permanent members of the security council, are holding themselves above the law,” says Amnesty International in a new report.
“The camera is a weapon. The camera can be a machine gun. It can be a psychoanalytical couch. It can be a warm kiss,” opines Henri Cartier-Bresson in The Decisive […]
How dangerous can media consolidation get? According to one writer, it can be deadly. In his book Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, Eric Klinenberg describes how […]
Three years ago, five-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter had a pulmonary embolism that threatened her life. She recounts her time in the ER as an incredibly frightening experience, and […]
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, stopped by the Big Think offices this afternoon to talk to us about his new book “Cognitive […]
In March, Sunlight Labs announced Design for America — a 10-week design and data visualization contest aiming to connect the creative community with the increasing amounts of public data produced […]
Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, announced today that he is putting down his pen. In his column, he talks about what he’s learned over the past […]
It looks like the internet forecasters were optimistic when they designed the current IP address architecture known as IPv4. They figured 4 billion addresses would be enough. But this was […]
Standardized tests are supposed to measure innate abilities. The subject of your last conversation, the lead story on the news last night, the pictures on the wall at the test […]
With the popularity of the Internet and self-publishing, Garrison Keillor laments the end of the glamorous age of publishing from a rooftop in Tribeca.
The strange behavior of two suppermassive black holes may change the way scientists understand the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
Robert Fisk thinks that political speak has taken over journalism and that accuracy of fact has become dominated by competing historical narratives that favor power over truth.
The Australian anthropologist Sarah Thornton has completed a study of the art world and traced its hierarchies and status-seekers just as she did the London party scene.
The incomprehensibility of quantum physics is responsible for the rise of postmodern social theories which reject the notion of a stable, immutable truth.