bigthinkeditor
Researchers are using social networking sites to map the spread of flu symptoms between friends, a technique which may one day aid greatly in stemming a public epidemic.
The divide in American ideology between rugged individualism and collective responsibility can be bridged by devolving powers to local communities, says Matthew Dowd for The CSM.
“Reminiscence—not forgetting—faces extinction in a digital age that prioritizes the present over even the recent past,” writes Evgeny Morozov for the Boston Review.
From Paper Monument, British culture is observed by an American writer as a reflection of his own; in both cases he sees a cultural facade papering over Empires fallen and falling.
Clarence Page sees a “radical individualism” that binds the TEA Party and the cultural revolution of the ’60s, but finds practical solutions more lacking in the former.
What does the Tea Party Movement in the U.S. have in common with the right-wing backlash against immigrants in Europe? Bard College professor Ian Buruma says they are both part […]
When Mario Lavandeira, a.k.a. Perez Hilton, started his blog PageSixSixSix.com in 2004, he says he imagined that maybe a few of his friends would read his musings on tabloid gossip […]
Chess makes for strange bed fellows. Last night at a party at the Trump SoHo hotel in downtown Manhattan, two former world chess champions, Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov, put […]
Peter Beinart writes that “particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal.”
Adam Thirwell writes that despite all the geographical accidents to have befallen Central Europe, a cogent literature can still be defined and it turns out to be of very high quality.
An L.A. Times editorial argues that Major League Baseball should move its All Star game out of Phoenix in protest against Arizona’s new immigration law.
Gary Becker and Richard Posner look at what created the housing market bubble of the previous decade and why financial institutions couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it.
Dozens of new species including the Pinocchio Frog, Gargoyle-Faced Gecko and Strange Pigeon have been discovered in Indonesia’s remote Foja Mountains on the island of New Guinea.
According to Einstein, the universe should be equal parts matter and anti-matter; in other words, we shouldn’t exist, so why do we? Some physicists in Chicago may have the answer.
Frank Kermode tries to suss out what Eliot meant by having “a shudder” while reading, a standard by which Eliot defined good poetry and prose, such as in Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
The Boston Globe finds a dangerous irony in Israel’s decision to keep Noam Chomsky from speaking at a Palestinian University in the West Bank.
“What we’re bequeathing our children is a childhood designed by lawyers,” says Lenore Skenazy who thinks pedantic caution is replacing common sense.
Charles Krauthammer congratulates himself for independently reaching the same conclusion as the Attorney General on loosening Miranda rights when public safety is at risk.
Ross Douthat writes, “from Washington to Athens, the economic crisis is producing consolidation rather than revolution, the entrenchment of authority rather than its diffusion.”
The L.A. Times reports that “for most of the 1920s, a patient could get a prescription for one pint every 10 days about as easily as California patients can now get ‘recommendations’ for medical marijuana.”
The recent intervention of government bailouts in the world economy has made markets more complex by introducing a new political risk to be managed, writes The New Yorker.
Jasper John’s (American) “Flag” sold for a record price in New York with other American artists taking top dollar in a reversal of a trend that has favored international artists.
A new generation of Islamic community leaders familiar with the American experience are reaching out to younger community members in order to offer religious advice.
Dramatist Friedrick Schiller and the late David Foster Wallace both wanted to lift their audience up instead of write down to them; their opinions are excerpted in Lapham’s Quarterly.
A medical company wants to offer over the counter genetic tests whose results show genetic predispositions to certain diseases, but the FDA is crying foul.
New neurological research suggests that each time a memory is recalled, it is subject to slight alternations; the implications could benefit sufferers of PTSD.
According to performance psychologist Jim Taylor, we must give up our democratic pretensions and focus education reform on poor and disadvantaged schools.
Conservative lawyer Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to a Court of Appeals by George W. Bush was blocked by Democrats, has written a letter supporting the confirmation of Elena Kagan.