The U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has the unique mission of protecting national security by maintaining technological superiority. If the new DARPA-funded “cheetah” robot is any indication, the agency is […]
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I’m still sorting through all my thoughts and impressions from the Netroots Nation conference this past week. But there’s one image that’s stayed with me vividly, which was a slide […]
These days, one of the blogs where I spend the most time commenting is Leah Libresco’s Unequally Yoked on Patheos. This isn’t just because its author has a unique and […]
(Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with my policy for such reviews.) Summary: A memoir of escape from the overbearing, oppressive life of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, but […]
The atheist community is abuzz over a discussion at last month’s Women in Secularism conference, in which it inadvertently emerged that there are prominent speakers who have a reputation for […]
The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, characterized “cyber” as an “existential threat to the United States of America” in a recent issue of Fortune […]
Author and Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown died yesterday at the lovely age of 90, after having been declared a “living landmark” in New York. In her honor I dusted […]
It’s pretty rare that you get to be present at the start of something potentially huge. It’s rarer still when everything about it – from concept, to idea, to funding, […]
The nonpartisan yet aggressively reforming mayor of NYC wants to ban sugary drinks of more than 16 ounces from being sold in various public establishments. We Southerners note that the ban would […]
What is the Big Idea? From Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs, America has always been a land of inventors and tinkerers, according to Adam Davidson, economic columnist for The New […]
A childfree friend of mine once memorably wondered why moms are so “judge-y” toward each other. I’m loath to reinforce the rhetorical overkill of calling this judge-y state the “mommy […]
The weekend is a good time to get some culture, and since there are a lot of things lately that I’m enjoying, I figured I’d write one completely miscellaneous post […]
I’ve been thinking in speculative directions lately, and nothing is more speculative than the question of whether we’ll one day be able to extend the human lifespan. The notion of […]
It’s no new news that the art world remains a man’s world for the most part, but that the situation’s getting better. Cindy Sherman’s major retrospective exhibition Cindy Sherman, which […]
Fireworks are really cool to watch, but to me, the best part is watching them with thousands of other people who have all come together with the same purpose…to […]
The most active, often eloquent, and judgmental of our ex-presidents—Jimmy Carter—explains why he would be comfortable with President Mitt Romney: “I’d rather have a Democrat but I would be comfortable,” […]
Peggielene Bartels was working as a secretary at Ghana’s Embassy in Washington D.C. when she got a phone call informing her that she had been crowned king of Otuam, a […]
Art news always offers wonderful confluences that stir the imagination. The wonderful news that Paul Cézanne’s The Boy in the Red Waistcoat (detail shown above), which had been stolen by […]
One year ago I wrote an article for Big Think with the title walking across campus whilst sitting on your couch in which I introduced my readers to the AnyBot, […]
A series of studies suggest that cognitive and cultural diversity within a group of entrepreneurs is more successful than a monoculture of aggressive intelligence.
In a new book, author Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues that innovation will occur differently than in the past. We need to harness the power of democratizing Internet technologies, he says.
What’s the Big Idea? This week in Washington D.C. the United States Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments on the constitutionality of federal health care legislation. It’s a case that […]
Dear Readers, For the weekend, a few miscellaneous notes: If there’s ever a book you’d like to see covered on Book Think, please feel free to drop me a note […]
Amid the tiny din of two-hundred micturating rodents, Ralph X. Bumblefutz goggled in disbelief at a discovery that would forever lay waste to the West’s most cherished ideas about incontinence. […]
I agree with the sagacious Carl Scott that the conservative bloggers have gone too far in their attacks on our president’s Occidental professor Roger Boesche. Obama called Boesche his favorite professor at Occidental, and he […]
My post from last week, “The Abraham Test“, provoked a vigorous discussion (225 comments and counting as of this writing) about the morality of committing violence in God’s name. Since […]
Google’s “augmented reality” glasses are upon us, complete with stylish company codename (“Project Glass”) and Orwellian rhetorical judo: “People I have spoken with [i.e., Google employees] who have have seen Project […]
It’s a Monday afternoon in Washington, DC. Do you know what your spouse is doing? I hate to break it to you, but 30 of them are sitting in their […]
BY AHMED EL-HADY Have you ever thought what is happening in our brains when we wander in the world around us? How do we perceive “reality”? How can we interact […]
What’s the Big Idea? “Contemporary research on consciousness in neuroscience rests on unquestioned but highly questionable foundations. Human nature is no less mysterious now than it was a hundred years […]