This year marks the 150th anniversary of Claude Debussy’s birth. Falling into the impressionist camp, the French composer is able to capture the essence of a feeling perhaps better than anyone else.
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“Pay attention to that alley over there. A gorilla in a clown suit is going to come out of it in a second.” If I said that to you, and […]
There’s much to criticise about this map of Pangea [1], but in spite of the geological anachronisms, it’s hard to tear your eyes away from it. The map shows a […]
Witnessing, as we all did, the events of Boston made me turn to the news. This was a mistake. Turning to social media was even worse. A mismanagement of information, […]
Researchers at the Berkeley Seismic Laboratory are helping to develop a seismometer app that will provide detailed information on who felt what and where.
We know very little for certain about how TV or iphones affect people at any age, for better or worse. But there’s reason to be skeptical about new products designed to make us and our children smarter.
If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]
Urban noise pollution is associated with increased risk factors for fatal diseases, says the World Health Organization. But sound can also be employed to make cities better places.
Over at the Breakthrough, my latest Public Square column takes a look at the good and the bad of Nate Silver’s cultural celebrity and oracle status. Here’s how the column […]
Neurological research shows that brains process auditory information ten times faster than visual cues, but our ability to truly listen is being put at risk by digital distraction and information overload.
NowThis News, an iOS app created by two former Huffington Post executives, brings the news to mobile users in segments lasting a minute or less.
The noise of the long campaign may not only be annoying, but also bad for your health. Big Think experts suggest effective ways for dealing with the over-consumption of information.
So what will you be doing Sunday night? My advice: Watch more TV! Now you innovative and disruptive BIG THINK readers might think you don’t have the time. But that’s […]
Big Data is becoming as powerful an asset as oil, and it will be the source of many high quality jobs in the near future.
In the first elections to be seen in the area in six years or more, more women are on the ticket than ever before, but skepticism about the elections themselves may hinder progress.
When composer Van Stiefel realized that he wanted to somehow set the paintings of Andrew Wyeth to music, he searched for the words to marry to his expressions in sound. […]
Ever feel sorry for a sidewalk sparrow with a cigarette butt in its beak? Did you sigh in wistful sadness at seeing nature’s beauty polluted by human industry, which turns […]
Picasso’s infatuation with the artistic past comes across in his 1957 The Maids of Honor, in which the artist takes Velazquez’s tour de force Las Meninas and reimagines it through his modern perspective.
This was indeed a choice election, if you consider the choice between consuming entertainment journalism or data-based journalism. Entertainment is fun, and math is hard. Math won.
A World War II veteran has created a wind turbine that hides its blades inside a drum-like structure so that birds and bats won’t fly into them accidentally.
What’s the Big Idea?The increasingly fluid cultural landscape and an overabundance of information call for new ways to gather useful business intelligence. In our hyper-connected world, ideas, data and conversations move […]
If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie reign as the premier power couple of Hollywood, then Seymour Chwast and Paula Scher deserve credit as the “Brangelina” of the world of graphic […]
The problem of scientists manipulating data in order to achieve statistical significance, labelled p-hacking is incredibly hard to track down due to the fact that the data behind statistical significance is often unavailable for analysis by anyone other than those who did the research and themselves analysed the data.
The type of global attention drawn to the Pussy Riot trial and verdict bears uncomfortable similarities to that engendered by the Kony 2012 video.
Microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation – “maser” technology – has been redesigned for practical use, with revolutionary implications for a variety of detection devices.
Computer algorithms can already recognize the kind of music most people like but will they ever create original compositions that suite our taste? One programmer says yes, definitely.
35 years after terrestrial astronomers received the Wow! signal, a radio transmission unique from the background noise of space, humanity is offering a reply. You can contribute via Twitter.
Editor’s note: The below is a guest post by Waq al-waq co-founder Brian O’Neill. (I want to thank Greg for inviting me to post, and urge any of you who […]
Fashion, like art, knocks the dust off of life.
On a late winter day in 1922, the sound of a gun shot resounded with a loud boom in the hills surrounding the house of three-year-old Edgar Curtis. The sound itself wasn’t out of the ordinary, since the Curtises lived near a firing range. What was extraordinary was the question the boy turned to ask his mother: “What is that big, black noise?”