The promise of broadband Internet in Africa just took an ugly publicity hit—from a pigeon. The BBC reports that a carrier pigeon was able to deliver four gigabytes of data […]
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Was Obama’s healthcare speech last night a game-changer? Did he give enough specifics about his plan? Was his outreach to the right enough to win moderate votes? The answers to […]
Not unexpectedly, one of the main industries hurt by the precipitous economic slump of the past few years has been philanthropy. In fact, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University […]
I am no apologist for the New York City subway. One of the reasons I bought a bike is to avoid its cramped cars, its smelly stations, and its under-repair […]
Pick a side, just like a football game with an invisible cup to win?
History is a car that doesn’t go in reverse. While my liberal-minded friends celebrated Obama as the end of expanding executive privilege, I knew we could never go back. Likewise, […]
Will aliens look like the people next door? I hope not.
Few of my pet peeves equal my distaste for conspiracy theories, whether it’s that the moon landing was a hoax, that the Bush Administration had a hand in 9/11, or […]
With the summer now behind us, countless sports fans are finding a tangible meaning in their lives that hadn’t been there in some time. That’s right. Football starts this week, […]
Syria is in the hot seat. You know you’re in trouble when the only person willing to visit is Hugo Chavez. Iraq accuses Syria of not doing enough to prevent […]
As director of the Millennium Village Project in Rwanda and co-Founder of the “prosperity creating’ organization” Rwanda Works, Josh Ruxin has seen first-hand which economic development policies and practices are […]
“Every joke,” George Orwell wrote, “is a tiny revolution.” That’s because what makes something funny is that it upsets the established order. The more subversive the joke—the more it says […]
Lenni Benson, a nationally recognized expert on immigration and a professor at NYU Law School, is confused about why, given the ascendancy of free market theories promoting the seamless flow […]
It was 13 years ago this week that rapper and actor Tupac Shakur was shot in Las Vegas, eventually being pronounced dead days later. In the years since, the iconic […]
Yesterday, while Americans were enjoying Labor Day on their myriad lawns and porches, we Europeans were (relatively) hard at work. The European Commission sat down yesterday to review Google Book’s […]
As we speak, NASA’s Kepler Mission is trailing the Earth in an orbit around the sun, spying into deep space and trying to find new planets in the “Goldilocks Zone”—just […]
Wall Street has a new gimmick. Buy a life insurance policy below face value and hope the policy holder dies sooner rather than later. “The sooner the policy holder dies, the bigger the return,” says The New York Times. Will that sentenced be prominently placed in the promotional material? I doubt it.
I am sitting in Abu George, a hideout in the old souk of Damascus. It is perhaps the world’s smallest bar. The joint’s avuncular namesake stands behind the small bar, […]
the need to have a good evaluation of what’s left and to invest seriously in nanotech for energy , recycling , creation of synthetic ressources.
From this point forward,the only way to pass a health-care bill is through budget reconciliation.
As social beings, we produce the replicator which allows religious longevity.
“We need more nurses and more burn wards
Fewer actors collecting dumb awards.”
Research on tech to harvest unlimited sources of energy.
Each day the Internet feels like a newly published set of encyclopedias. So much new content, only about 16 waking hours to take it in, and really it’s only a […]
Every week another study comes out documenting the tragic ecological consequences of an invasive species entering a new area and dominating the unsuspecting and unprepared native species. The history books, […]
Glenn Beck went off on Van Jones again on his show the other night, raising the question of whether Obama’s green jobs adviser was thoroughly vetted by the administration. “I […]
Over the past two years, it’s become an all-too-common refrain. I just got laid off, now what? Considering the state of the U.S. job market and current levels of unemployment […]
Next Tuesday, September 8th, to mark the start of the school year, President Obama will make a speech about the importance of taking responsibility for one’s education and setting goals […]
We at Big Think have rarely interviewed someone more sanguine than legendary graphic artist Milton Glaser. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise: ever since a small promotional assignment for the […]