What is a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) anyway? And why did it get the United States into so much trouble? According to NYU economist Robert Engle, CDOs are “wonderful creations” […]
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Microfinance—a system of small loans and money services geared toward small businesses—has been heralded as a bold new financial frontier, opening up a wealth of opportunity to those otherwise unable […]
Eliminate the middle-man. This classic piece of business advice recently received an unusual interpretation: the literary agent, commonly seen as the middle-man between author and publishing house, is circumventing the […]
This idea was suggested by Big Think Delphi Fellow Joseph LeDoux, of the Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology at NYU. “Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better […]
Los Angeles often feels like another planet to non-natives, from the confluence of cultures to the often unearthly architecture. In Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, Thomas S. […]
Ever have a tune run through your mind, with no name or words attached? When you squawk out what you think might be the melody, people just shrug in perplexity. […]
“The burqa is not religious headwear; it is a physical barrier to engagement in public life adopted in a deep spirit of misogyny,” says The Stone column at the New York Times.
“The most surprising thing about WikiLeaks’ released trove of officially secret documents is how few surprises it contains.” Doyle McManus says the government has been candid with us.
A new study by economists Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder says the U.S. economic stimulus averted a worse downturn, says The Guardian. Conservatives maintain the spending was ineffective.
History professor Mark LeVine examines the complex relationships between immigration, globalization, and natural resource extraction. He sees a system that stratifies wealth.
“We’ll increasingly be defined by what we say no to,” says Paul Graham. The essayist writes that technological development creates addictive products from drugs to the Internet.
“An anthropologist argues that polygamy is harmful as Canada considers whether having multiple wives is a constitutional right.” Our neighbors to the North take a surprising turn.
A private university in England has changed their curriculum to offer a two-year degree and its students highly approve. A two-year degree may make more economic sense in our times.
“Overall, social support increases survival by some 50 percent, concluded the authors behind a new meta-analysis.” Scientific American reports on the effects of our spreading social isolation.
Job retraining seems like an ideal solution for the unemployed, but problems persist. Are Americans being trained for the right jobs, and what if nobody is hiring in the first place?
“According to a controversial new theory, our emotions have evolved as tools to manipulate others into cooperating with us.” The New Scientist says emotions are the currency of relationships.
Illustrator Jess Bachman diagrams Glenn Beck’s shady links to Goldline in an accessible infographic. To summarize: Goldine is a sponsor of Beck’s TV and radio shows. Beck tells his audience […]
David Keith, director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the University of Calgary, says geoengineering should be “a central part of how we think about managing climate risk over the next 100 years.”
The big cognitive and emotional news in the Mind Matters household is that it is expecting the arrival in a few weeks of a demanding, very long-staying guest, whose personality […]
The newspapers of yore had two dependable revenue streams: subscribers and advertisers. Today’s broadsheets draw money from the same sources, but funding problems at even the most mainstream papers are […]
Trypanophobia – the extreme, irrational fear of needles – is said to affect 10% of American adults. And then there are the merely squeamish ones, for whom getting a shot […]
In my most recent book “Physics of the Impossible,” I define three classes of impossibilities in regards to technology. Class One impossibilities are technologies that are impossible today but don’t […]
Big ideas are usually too big, says Jason Fried, co-founder of the software company 37signals and co-author of the workplace manifesto “Rework.” “If we have a big idea, let’s chop […]
A $20m refit aims to cut the Empire State Building’s energy use by 40% and save emissions equal to 20,000 cars, says the Guardian. The motive is profit rather than conscience.
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg says the democratization of the media is an improvement over alleged moral gatekeepers like Walter Cronkite, the ‘saint of bourgeois America.’
The Smart Set considers the phrase ‘State-of-the-Art’ and asks why some things receive so much praise just for being new? Progress, it says, is something distinct from improvement.
A group of leaders spread across the globe have been given secret keys and are “charged with rebooting the web if it is sent into meltdown by a terror attack or mass hacking.”