Permission to use embryonic stem cells has been requested by scientists developing a cure for blindness.
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Harvard is the latest US University to take up the fictional wizard-sport Quidditch which features in the Harry Potter books.
Senator John Kerry’s daughter was arrested yesterday in Las Angeles on suspicion of driving while under the influence.
Detainees transferred by Canadians to Afghan prisons are “likely to have been tortured by Afghan officials” a former senior Canadian diplomat has claimed.
Are you an eligible prospective immigrant to the United States? Are you feeling lucky? If so, you have 10 more days to apply for the random selection process conducted annually […]
The Guardian says it’s a bad idea for the the Times of London to build a paywall by next spring. Spectator Magazine (UK) only lost 3% of readers after putting […]
“Would you please turn the lights up,” Robert F Kennedy Jr. asked the stage crew as he took the floor of New York’s Town Hall in Times Square, about to […]
Footnote about the Pinker-Gladwell kerfuffle: To discredit Gladwell, Pinker takes advantage of a truly embarrassing mistake (the science-writer’s nightmare) in which Gladwell misspelled “eigenvalue” as “igon value.” (It seems a […]
When it comes to gauging exactly how the economy is faring, the long-held method has been to look towards the bare necessities. Turns out they don’t get much more bare […]
Last night a fireball lit up parts of the Utah sky– and the phenomenon, which saw the dead of night as bright as day, was captured on CCTV.
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called the hacking of her Yahoo e-mail account the “most disruptive and discouraging” incident in her campaign.
A service by North Pole dwellers to answer letters addressed to Santa has been suspended after a sex offender was recognized as a volunteer.
Sufferers of the chromosomal disorder Downs syndrome could be helped by a new drug which increases the levels of message-carrying chemicals in the brain.
In South Africa a polygamist businessman has been convicted of the murder of his pregnant wife and the attempted murder of his second wife.
President Barack Obama needs to take decisive action in Afghanistan and remind the American public why they are fighting the war he inherited from George Bush.
A super-submarine left over from the Second World War has been found in Hawaii.
Some morbidly overweight people don’t realise they’re obese according to the findings of a new report.
A translation firm is offering prospective parents the chance to check their preferred baby-names don’t mean anything embarrassing in other languages.
President Obama has admitted that the US government will miss the January 2010 deadline for closing Guantanamo Bay.
The new Atlantic magazine has an intriguing dispatch about how “Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops—and often sex and […]
Jim McManus visited Big Think today to talk about the poker habits of the men who have inhabited the White House. The stories he told come from his new book […]
In the 1960s, the world seemed on the verge of a global food crisis, as the population grew faster than the food supply. As I wrote last week, thanks largely […]
It looks like the Iranians have balked on their promise to ship lowly enriched uranium to Russia. One wonders if the whole thing was a ruse to tamp down the […]
We criminalize drug addicts in this country. To Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that would be equivalent to putting someone with Parkinson’s in jail. Drug […]
The United States’ Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act takes effect on Saturday. Subsequently, it will be illegal for employers to use genetic test results to make decisions about their employees, or […]
Later this evening, the literary community finds out whether David Small’s “Stitches” will be the first graphic novel ever to win a National Book Award. This morning, Big Think asked […]
Big Think conducted a special interview today with George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente. As the world’s largest nonprofit health plan and hospital system, Kaiser Permanente is a micro-healthcare system unto […]
The world is on course for a “catastrophic” 6 degrees centigrade rise in temperature, meaning that the worst-case predictions for climate change are coming true.
A letter written by former US president Abraham Lincoln to a schoolboy around 150 years ago is to go on sale.
A businessman has pleaded guilty to setting fire to $200m worth of vintage wines in what is believed to be an attempt to cover up a pyramid scheme.