This week in 1848, 68 women and 32 men signed a Declaration of Rights and Sentiments for women’s equality. This document, and the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, out […]
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A month or two ago I wrote about the rampant proliferation of “hotness” ratings for women where they have no business or place. Even the most accomplished women, ranging from […]
Seventy-five years ago, The Museum of Modern Art staged their first exhibition devoted to the work of a single photographer—Walker Evans: American Photographer. That show brought together many of Walker […]
How desperate can a city facing financial armageddon get? What’s the last resort for cities such as Detroit, wounded first by the failing American auto industry and then set bleeding […]
As comedian Martin Mull (allegedly) once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Sound’s non-verbal qualities help it elude any attempts to pin it down definitively through the […]
This week’s Supreme Court decisions have been the main topics streaming into my Facebook and Twitter feeds (along with a few heartfelt thoughts for Nelson Mandela). Escaping a thumbs up […]
Last week was a big one for assumptions. There was Wolf Blitzer asking an Oklahoma tornado survivor if she was thankful that the Lord spared her life. Then that brief, […]
Professor Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins, the nation’s leading critic of administrative bloat in higher education, has a modest proposal worthy of Jonathan Swift himself. If we’re going to have the […]
The man who killed a prostitute because she wouldn’t return his $150 has been acquitted. Now what?
How can a uniquely Shakespearean habit of mind can be applied to our own lives in order to help us think more creatively?
Human beings are fallible, politicians perhaps most of all, and Republicans ought to know this.
America is much like the Hotel California: “You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.”
One of my favorite BIG THINKERS, Dave Berreby, criticizes our Declaration of Independence. Here’s the Declaration’s theory: We have the right to life, and we have the right to the […]
The world just lost a brilliant and fearless journalist. Michael Hastings did more in his short life than most people do in an entire lifetime. As information continues to come […]
It’s graduation season and young people everywhere are listening to speeches rife with promises of new beginnings. With one baby boomer turning 67 every seven to eight seconds, many older […]
Among the many things about America that the American Civil War changed was its art. Painting and sculpture simply couldn’t be the same. In these sesquicentennial years, every aspect of […]
In 2013, an American prisoner fought for an execution: “for” not “against”. The question is whether we should have allowed him to commit suicide and/or receive help in doing so. In […]
Each time it’s used, the device communicates with an iPhone app that keeps track and posts the user’s progress to a Twitter account named TweetingCiggy.
Consider one last autobiographical note before I answer the question: “How do we avoid the Sartre Fallacy?” I conducted an independent study my senior year that focused on biases and […]
Members of the philosophy department at San Jose State University reacted angrily last week when they were asked to consider incorporating Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel’s online Justice course into […]
Congratulations to all the new graduates who have successfully accomplished this most impressive of endeavors.
On Thursday, John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to be the new director of the CIA, went before the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions. I watched all three and-a-half hours […]
If there’s one thing Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries doesn’t want, it’s non-skinny women. The company won’t make clothes in larger sizes because they want to attract the “cool […]
At the beginning of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes made a bold but logical prediction (pdf): In the long run, humanity was solving its economic problems, so that by […]
Big Think and TEDMED, the TED licensee for health and medicine, are collaborating on an upcoming series on how you can apply emerging ideas in health and science to your own life.
In 1951, musical composer and overall art theorist John Cage (shown above) stepped into an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. Touted as the quietest place on Earth, the anechoic chamber […]
When I was a teen-age consumer of cheap paperbacks about worlds more interesting than this one, I noticed a clear and sharp split between readers who loved SF (spaceships, time […]
How fear of swimming led to two very different evolutionary approaches to conflict resolution
A few days ago, 64 influential Catholics appealed to their co-religionists in Congress to support gun-control legislation. They laid down a pretty solid Catholic guilt trip: Members of Congress who […]
We have reached a moral, legal and demographic tipping point in the controversy. Many signs point to an imminent marriage revolution: gay and lesbian Americans across the country will enjoy a right to marry — maybe before the end of the year.