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Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts. 

To celebrate her Jubilee year, the Queen had a large chunk of Antarctica named after her; possibly upsetting the Argentinians and Chileans. 

So that’s it: the presidential debate season is over. Romney won the first, Obama took the second and…who won the third? Some say the San Francisco Giants, playing opposite the […]

James Ceaser, perhaps our most distinguished student of American politics on the conservative side, isn’t about predicting the outcome of elections.  That’s actually hard to do. And those political scientists […]

The horrifying midnight movie shooting spree in Colorado on Friday has re-ignited the national debate over gun control that raged following the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres in 1999 and […]

John Gray’s review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind is fun because Gray is vehemently opposed to almost everything, but he clearly thinks this is a pretty good book anyway. […]

I’m eager to join in the “Which five books on a desert island?” game suggested by Big Think editor Dan Honan in a recent post. As a blogger, would-be critic, […]

One of the biggest problems with lists is that with lists come labels. A list of African-American artists or women artists already sets them up as different (and perhaps less, […]

Fearing budget cuts, N.A.S.A. chief Charlie Bolden told Congress that the next-generation space telescope has greater potential for discovery than the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.

When you hear the name Samuel F. B. Morse you most likely think about Morse code or the telegraph. In reality, Morse only co-invented the code that bears his name […]

Polls have shown that public opinion is clearly trending in favor of gay marriage. And yet, it will take bipartisan action to pass legislation in New York this week.

Shakespeare’s Henry V is a play full of great motivational speeches and inspiring leadership. Based on actual historical events of the 15th century, the play centers around the climactic Battle […]

A website will analyze your emails and chats and estimate how well you are in sync with your partner, frenemy or whoever.

On each day of Shakespeare’s birth month, Big Think will examine a different way that studying Shakespeare enriches the various disciplines—from neuroscience to business to psychology and beyond.

2010 was a great year for art publishing, with many presses producing high quality works not only in terms of reproducing great art, but also in publishing important thinkers on […]

Environmental groups–backed by clean energy investors and Hollywood moguls– have raised $26 million to defeat California’s Proposition 23, a measure that would rollback the state’s laws limiting greenhouse gas emissions. […]

The fourth in my ongoing “Volcano Profile” turns our attention to the southernmost (known) active volcano, Mt. Erebus in Antarctica.

Readers in the DC area will definitely want to check out the upcoming event on June 23 at the National Academies. Details are posted below. I hope to be able […]

James Thomson w/ Ian Wilmut (seated)What happens politically when the two scientists most widely associated with therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cell research appear to abandon cloning and embryo extraction […]

The Metcalfe Institute at the University of Rhode Island has announced its 2008 Grantham Prize winners for environmental reporting. The series “Choking on Growth” by The NY Times on China […]

In a series of posts over at Scientific American’s blog CrossCheck, John Horgan describes how several recent articles and books have prompted him to re-evaluate his views on nuclear energy. […]

The Center for Inquiry has posted a list of its many Darwin Day events scheduled for locations across the country. For science enthusiasts, these events serve as an important ritual […]

Praise the Lord and pass the dictionary!

There have been countless fictional portrayals of fake American presidents in pop culture. From the alien-battling President Thomas Whitmore in “Independence Day” to hopeless romantic President Andrew Shepherd in “the […]

The amount of money hedge funds make is only surpassed by the amount of secrecy surrounding how they make it.  To pull back the curtain on these financial wizards, Big […]

“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang in “Woodstock,” the song that tried to capture the spirit of the generation-defining gathering. For […]

Back in February, I traveled to Rome, Italy to present at a conference sponsored by Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the Adriano Olivetti Foundation. The focus was on climate change […]

This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]

I wanted to start the year off on a positive note, but a spin around the blogosphere today has already got my blood pressure up. In particular, I am extremely […]

Gardening practices of to not too rightious soul