WEIRD stands for western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Though WEIRD people are a minority in global terms, they constitute the field of study for most psychological research.
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How can government protect you from your own harmful desires like gambling and drinking? New ‘self-exclusion’ policies allow people to plan ahead for those moment of impulse.
Bill Gates says the government should do more R&D in the energy sector, that a Manhattan Project for sustainable energy won’t work and that a carbon tax is necessary.
Twenty inventions will compete for a prize of $30,000 at the design competition sponsored by British inventor James Dyson. A life raft that makes saltwater potable is in the running.
The specter of $10 is lurking in the corners of the startup industry. The figure is common to two aspects of the website business. As I wrote about earlier, blog […]
When I wrote last week about the fact that all California state employees have to sign a loyalty oath, a reader took issue with the picture I posted of school […]
Power in politics turns on being able to simultaneously control attention to an issue while also defining the terms of debate. A golden rule is to define yourself and your […]
Let them build it. Is this what the rationalists want us to say? Let them build it. These four words counter the one, more emotional one—never—echoing across anger from the […]
The perils of plastic are nothing new to most of us. A lesser-known fact, however, is that plastic has a higher energy value than just about any other type of […]
The other shoe has dropped in Harvard’s investigation into allegations of scientific misconduct by Marc Hauser, the cognitive psychologist. Harvard announced last week that it had found Hauser responsible for […]
The rate of change in our culture is increasing—and in order to compete, businesses need to increase their rate of change as well, says management guru John Kotter. In his […]
I am proud to announce that the second season of “Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible,” debuts next Wednesday, Sept. 1, at 9 pm, on the Science Channel (check […]
We are currently in the midst of earth’s “sixth great extinction.” For the past 10,000 years, existing species have been dying out faster than new species have been evolving, say […]
In a series of posts over at Scientific American’s blog CrossCheck, John Horgan describes how several recent articles and books have prompted him to re-evaluate his views on nuclear energy. […]
Amid questions over U.K. taxpayer money spent on sex services for the disabled, Naomi Jacobs rejects the “myth” that the disabled need to exploit prostitutes to have sex.
New research once again shows that the poor are not only more generous than those wealthier and they are also more charitable, trusting and helpful.
“Disney has a long history of dress policies and is within its rights in restricting where a restaurant worker can wear a hijab,” says the L. A. Times in an editorial.
“There’s a reason we’re fighting to keep this unretouched image of Aniston on our website. And it’s not just because we like her freckles.” Jezebel on the impact of for retouching.
“The messages lost through faulty translation in Afghanistan are sabotaging the mission there as badly as any physical enemy ever could,” warns Neil Shea.
Strange, unworkable, controversial. That’s some of the reaction to a German proposal to prevent bosses from checking job candidates’ social networking profiles.
Writer and marketing guru Seth Godin is spurning traditionally published books. As Mathew Ingram notes, self-published PDFs and e-books are increasingly attracting such authors.
Eilert Sundt must have had a busy, happy week. As the president of the Norwegian Cartozoological Society, Mr Sundt probably is the world’s most prominent ambassador of the obscure discipline […]
Hurricane Katrina may have cost them their homes and split up their families, but some credit it as the impetus to reinvent their lives for the better, explains Nicole LaPorte.
Of the problems that afflict the U.S., “the underlying one is mental feebleness.” N.Y.T. Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks sets out the case for more mental courage.
“To develop real knowledge in a discipline, students must master facts and construct opinions about them.” Jonathan Zimmerman explains why final exams are antiquated.
“The main argument here is that pleasure is deep,” Paul Bloom writes early on in his new book, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We […]
As a follow up to his guest post yesterday on the prospects for independent book stores, I asked Paul D’Angelo, a communication professor at the College of New Jersey, his […]
What do God, Dr. Frankenstein, and Lady Gaga have in common? They are all names that geneticist-cum-media-sensation Craig Venter has been called since announcing in May that he had created […]
We all think we know what it means to be conscious, but it is hard to pin this down in a precise, scientific way—as USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in our video. Every weekday in September, Big Think will offer a new insight into the human brain in our new “Going Mental” blog.
Using lasers to manipulate the weather sounds like science fiction, but researchers at the University of Geneva have done just that. In May, Dr. Jerome Kasparian unveiled the results of […]