“Why learn about the glass ceiling in a sociology class if you are going to hit it anyway a decade after graduation?” A liberal arts professor meditates on the the liberal arts conundrum.
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“People who fake symptoms of mental illness can convince themselves that they genuinely have those symptoms, a new study suggests.” Scientific American on the power of the mind.
“It is the poor, not the rich, who are inclined to charity.” The Economist reports on a study that finds the less affluent are quicker to compassion and more willing to give to the needy.
“Ocean life is being wiped out from the bottom up,” reports the New Scientist. Recall from your high school food chain diagram that the smallest critters are the most important.
“The truth lies somewhere between ‘men oppress women with their uncontrollable needs’ and ‘women oppress men with their socially constructed monogamous love.’”
Being the bottom rung on the social ladder causes enough stress to shorten your life, according to a study of British social servants. Lack of control was the main cause of despair.
Silence speaks volume. In the unmitigated disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico, two silent partners watch as BP endures a hurricane of criticism, Transocean and Haliburton, who it has […]
No code is unbreakable. Mathematicians may be able design codes that can’t be cracked by all the computational power available on earth, but that won’t guarantee the security of the […]
There will be more. Julian Assange has assured us this: there will be more. Do we want more? Will the release of more classified material place more lives at risk? […]
Whatever you want to call it, a half-zebra, half-donkey hybrid was born last week in a wildlife preserve in Georgia. The offspring of a zebra father and a donkey mother, […]
Until James Currier had four sons in 36 months, he was just a regular Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Having sold a start-up called Tickle to Monster in 2004, he took some […]
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” […]
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.
