A new scientific study out of Germany confirms that growing genetically modified crops is good for national economies as well as farmers’ wallets, allowing more crops to be grown on less land.
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Telling your friend how a TV show, movie, or piece of live theatre ends may incur his or her wrath, so determined are we to preserve the element of surprise.
Predictions that the global population would level off later this century may prove false, reviving a debate about how to grow national economies while protecting environmental resources.
A writer makes a connection between the wild world of Twitter and the sociological principles of hypercriticism, which stipulates that negative statements are inherently assumed to be more intelligent than positive ones.
Environmental Strategist Andrew Winston visited Big Think this week to discuss how the business world can play a major role in dealing with climate change.
“Often what people call sustainability… the things that fall under that that are environmental or social challenges – there’s this assumption in business that trying to tackle these issues will be expensive… There’s a sense that green was somehow not good for business. It wasn’t out of nowhere but that’s really a dated view. We now have a situation where the challenges are so vast and the world is changing so fundamentally that the only path we have forward is to manage these issues.”
Combining alcoholic drinks with caffeine causes people to drink more for a variety of reasons, say psychological researchers from several American universities.
Wouldn’t it be more fair if being elected to a federal office required a majority rather than plurality of votes? Perhaps it’s time to replace our current voting system with a ranked ballot.
Despite all those early quarrels, research suggests that having a sibling greatly improves your behavioral development and quality of life.
The age of consumerism is a well known notion nowadays, and it breeds the idea that we have more freedom in choosing what we want and how to spend our […]
If you’ve got a friend or family member who practices medicine, asking them for advice can feel like an easy alternative to visiting a doctor. But sometimes those requests for help cross a line that doctors aren’t keen to approach.
“Bürgerschreck!” rang the accusations in German at Austrian painter Egon Schiele in April 1912. This “shocker of the bourgeois” found his home rifled by local constables searching for evidence of the immorality locals suspected of a man who lived with a woman not his wife and invited local children to pose for him. The constables brought over one hundred drawings as well as Schiele himself to the local jail, where he sat for 24 days until a court trial during which the judge flamboyantly burned one of Schiele’s “pornographic” portraits in front of the chastised artist before releasing him. That experience changed the rest of Schiele’s life and art. Egon Schiele: Portraits at the Neue Galerie in New York City centers on this turning point in Schiele’s portraits, which remain some of the most psychologically penetrating and sexual explicit portraits of the modern age. Schiele’s capacity to shock today’s audience may have declined as modern mores finally catch up to him, but the power of his portraits to captivate through their unconventionality, sensitivity, and empathy never gets old.
The reason why isn’t important. If you want to keep your job search a secret, the key is erasing potential clues while maintaining a strong office poker face.
“To be able to read and write is to learn to profit by and take part in the greatest of human achievements — that which makes all other achievements possible — namely, the pooling of our experiences in great cooperative stores of knowledge, available to all. From the warning cry of primitive man to the latest newsflash or scientific monograph, language is social. Cultural and intellectual cooperation is the great principle of human life.”
-S.I. Hayakawa, from Language in Thought & Action
If you’re a winter sports buff who’s always wanted a custom-built snowboard, perhaps look into a trip to Innsbruck. There, a company called Spurart will guide you in handcrafting your own board.
Despite it’s reputation as an “infinite range” force, the realities of our Universe place a limit on its reach. “In my dreams and visions, I seemed to see a line, […]
Author and academic Kenji Yoshino describes the difference between passing and covering, and how companies will sometimes employ a myopic form of diversity inclusion that necessitates the abandonment of one’s identity.
“Don’t just stand there, let’s get to it. Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it,” Madonna lied and “Vogue”-ed way back in 1990. Contrary to popular opinion, posing is hard work, made even harder by the requirement to look effortless. The reigning “Queen of Pose,” Canadian supermodel Coco Rocha has been clocked at 160 different poses per minute and viral videoed striking 50 poses in 30 seconds. When photographer Steven Sebring approached Rocha back in 2010 with the idea of a project involving one model striking a thousand different poses captured using Sebring’s revolutionary, 360-degree photographic technology, it seemed a match made in modeling heaven. Study of Pose: 1,000 Poses by Coco Rocha tests the limits of expression by the human form while capitalizing on the latest in technology to produce no less than a new manifesto on posing the human body as an object to be both admired and accepted for all its truth and beauty.
The death knell for the banner ad is tolling and few are lamenting its decline.
The so-called sharing economy rarely features actual instances of people sharing items with each other, or at least not without a price. Starting a neighborhood sharing network is a great way to unite a community beneath the banner of pooled resources.
Quitting an unsatisfying job may be the best possible move you could make in your 20s. A study has revealed that job-hopping could lead to a better, more fulfilling career in your 30s and 40s.
Most examples of stress management advice call for long-term lifestyle shifts, which are all fine and good. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything you can do when stress sneaks up on your in the moment.
Feeling blue this week? Chances are you’re a Democrat. I was so addled by the Republican sweep on Tuesday that I could not so much as glance at the front […]
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control… Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.”
-Julia Cameron, American artist, from The Artist’s Way, 1992
Taking long walks, dimming the lights down low, mussing up your desk–we all have our tricks to get the creative juices flowing. But there’s another way to invigorate the right-side of your brain: a sense of entitlement.
Originating out beyond Neptune, thousands of world originate. Who’s the largest? It’s not who you expect, Pluto-lovers! “It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that […]
French researchers have developed an equation that, after accounting for specific variables, can inform runners and coaches of the optimal strategy for winning a race.
In the last decade, the business and technology worlds have become obsessed with the science of the mind. The thinking goes as follows: if we understand the mind, in all […]
Julie Sunderland, the Director of Program Related Investments for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, explains how the Foundation works to include and incentivize the private sector in order to accomplish its ambitious goals.
Meat consumption is increasingly seen as a health risk, an environmental risk, and a misuse of precious land and water resources.
We have electric charges and fields, but only magnetic fields. Could there be magnetic charges in our Universe? “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is […]