In the midst of an intense meditation on Walt Whitman in his Studies in Classic American Literature, D. H. Lawrence suddenly proclaims: The essential function of art is moral. Not […]
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Here are hypotheses 10 through 18 on how social media might change your love life. Click here for Part 1… ASSORTATIVE MATING ON STEROIDS Like marries like today. “Assortative mating” […]
As Yogi Berra said of baseball, it is 90 percent mental, and “the other half is physical.” This ‘Yogi-ism’ is equally applicable to tennis, a sport in which elite players need to be “intuitive physicists” in order to win at the highest level.
If Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus shown above seems a bit off, you’re right. In this version of “Venus on the Half-Shell,” the goddess is almost half her self, thanks […]
Now that SCOTUS deliberation over the constitutionality of portions of Obamacare is going much worse than most liberals predicted, left-leaning pundits are screaming “judicial activism!” which is cute, though I […]
The brain is a complex and demanding machine. Given the amount of resources required to run the average brain, it’s no surprise that it takes a few shortcuts when it […]
In our increasingly complex world we can’t afford to silo ourselves off in little online and offline subcultures.
As I wrote last year in a chapter at the Oxford Handbook of Climate Change & Society, the imagined public relative to climate change remains a source of ever growing anxiety […]
In 1923, during an exhibition of his art collection that would become the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, two years later, Dr. Albert C. Barnes told an interviewer, “I am […]
Editor’s Note: Please welcome Korey Peters, who’s written a guest post about an atheist organization he’s founded that he’s calling the Calgary Secular Church. In this post, he’ll explain what […]
As we approach Earth Day, I’ve had some interesting thoughts about the science vs. religion, materialism vs. spirituality debate. Being a spiritual teacher myself, I generally tend to feel more […]
John Horgan, author of the book The End of War argues that warring or violent behavior is not innate to human nature. Horgan shares the belief of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead that war is a cultural innovation.
In the past month, the debate over whether to legalize gay marriage has become front page news due to legislative battles in Washington, New Hampshire, New Jersey and now Maryland. The issue only promises to […]
If Julius Caesar hadn’t accidentally burned down the Library of Alexandria, the story goes, we long ago would have colonized Mars. That notion, popularized by Carl Sagan, among others, is that the […]
At the Brooklyn Museum’s current retrospective of Keith Haring’s early work, titled Keith Haring: 1978–1982, you can view what may be the earliest video of the artist at work. In […]
This week I came across an interesting study by Latitude Research via the MindShift Blog. In collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis, Latitude asked children from across the […]
So the final issue in my class in PUBLIC POLICY this semester is HIGHER EDUCATION. Here are some controversial propositions generated from papers I’ve just read from the class. I’m […]
Leaving aside a few notable exceptions, the reactions to the latest UN Conference on Sustainable Development—Rio+20, as it’s widely known—read like a collective obituary for global governance. Mark McDonald catalogued […]
For everyone who loves their art and their sports, the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, and the accompanying London 2012 Cultural Olympiad seem a match made in heaven. […]
With Stephen Colbert on vacation this week, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona seems to have jumped into the role of the laughable conservative who makes ridiculous arguments with a straight face — or, in this case, who tries to make worthwhile political science research sound ridiculous.
The “slippery slope” is a popular argument in the same-sex marriage debate. Where do you draw the line, opponents argue? If you start allowing marriage between people of the same […]
What’s the Big Idea? If the scientific consensus had been right, Sue Barry would still be seeing in 2-D. Barry was born with strabismus, a condition which prevented her eyes from gazing in […]
In Acts of God and Man: Ruminations on Risk and Insurance,Michael Powers examines how risk impacts our lives, health, and possessions and how we can go about analyzing the uncertainty. In […]
A few years ago I gave a sermon at my (very liberal) church asking the question: “What determines the limit to our tolerance?” After the service, one member of the […]
Here at Mind Matters, we aren’t big fans of militant atheism, or any other doctrine that prefers to explain away other views, rather than engaging them. I’m convinced that rhetorical […]
If there’s a villain in Rosalind E. Krauss’ newest book, Under Blue Cup, it’s Marcel Duchamp. Art fell in the toilet with the dawn of Duchamp’s Fountain.
Big Think hit the streets (the intersection of Wall & Broad, NYC) during the AM rush hour this Friday, May 18th with a guerilla theater piece for Facebook IPO day. […]
Imagine if Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1992 and woke up yesterday. He would probably be amazed at the extent to which our national conversation on reproductive health has […]
I’ve been grazing online, looking for a place to host my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. When I talk to event organizers at venues, you can hear them stop short, and […]
By Aaron Smith Since the beginning of the digital age, pundits have hailed virtual currencies as the future of our civilization’s money. While it may be difficult to imagine a […]