The military tends to talk in signs and numbers—and, perhaps most famously, in code. The use of abbreviations and alphabetical systems is efficient. In this week’s New Yorker, we learn […]
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The sound of children laughing delights listeners more than any other noise, a New Zealand study has found. Psychologist Aaron Jarden says it is because laughter is associated with well-being.
Stewart Brand’s famous maxim, “Information Wants to be Free,” has been, for more than 25 years, one of the most popular rallying cries of the Digital Age. These words have […]
The online retail revolution has produced spectacular success stories like Groupon and Gilt Groupe. Adam Bryant of The New York Times talks to Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe, about where the industry is heading in the future.
For the people of Iceland, the past few years must feel like the old saying “when it rains, it pours’: we’ve seen two significant eruptions, one at Eyjafjallajökull and one […]
A lot of volcanoes produce 3-km ash plumes on the regular basis. Right now, there are probably two or three volcanoes in Kamchatka or Indonesia alone that are generating plumes of […]
Paul Bogush pushed back (in a nice way) on my recently-popular post, If you were on Twitter. First he wrote about how most educators are too busy to be involved in […]
Disputes about evidence in social science can drag on for decades. I bet many a researcher has fantasized about the day when a world-famous panel of judges looks at the […]
In early 2009, I came across a new trend on the social web that immediately resonated with me. Local communities used a new platform called Meetup (www.meetup.com) to organize offline events . . .
It has been a busy weekend in the news. Likely lost in all the hub-bub is the continued activity at Tungurahua in Ecuador. The volcano has continued to erupt (video), producing […]
Jean Jacques Rousseau called cities “…the abyss of the species“. Well, they may not be that bad, but with their crowding and competition and noisy get-ahead in-your-face rat race environments, […]
Is chaos the natural order for the innately diverse and fragmented nature of music and its associated industry, asks singer-songwriter Catherine Hol.
It’s not easy for most urban dwellers to get their daily dose of nature moving from one concrete box to another. Habitat Horticulture tries to solve this problem by painting walls […]
n nOver at the IdeaPort blog, Roger Dennis presents a PG-13 rated list of ten reasons why innovation is like tantric sex: n n 1. You can read lots about […]
In Guantánamo Files, the New York Times coverage of Guantánamo from WikiLeaks documents, one piece in particular caught my attention: a discussion of the difficulty of judging detainees’ risk of […]
Tonight’s the night! Including myself, we’ll have 19 people for our discussion of Tribes here in Ames. I’m really looking forward to the conversation. We’re going to do our best […]
GUEST POST BY JASON SILVA The spectacular think tank and apparel company The Imaginary Foundation states that “To Understand Is To Perceive Patterns”. This seemingly simple sentence is actually utterly profound: what it […]
A brief update while I’m out of town … If Japan didn’t need more geologic (and man-made) disaster, it now appears that the Shinmoedake cone at Kirishima has started erupting […]
Fellow Big Think blogger Scott McLeod invited me to write a dual post with him on our thoughts about the 2011 K12 Horizon Report today. Although my background is more […]
Question: How do you remain mindful when juggling two, three, four, however many things at once? Answer: You probably don’t. For a long time, cognitive scientists have observed that processing […]
Marketing guru Seth Godin coins new terms and expressions on a regular basis, and this time, he’s decided to trade in his Purple Cow for a Purple Sheep. As Godin […]
After a few months of intermittent explosions since late 2010, Bulusan in the Philippines looks to be at it again (although not really a “major volcanic eruption” as the Huffington Post […]
When it comes to the Libyan revolution and the peculiar madness of Colonel Gadaffi, what is the right move?
The best portraits look as if the subject could step right out of the frame and walk among us, maybe even sign an autograph or two. Recently, something like that […]
For those of you interested in all the coming and going with volcanoes and earthquakes in Iceland, if you’re not following Jon Frimann’s blog, well, for shame. He usually has […]
n Why aren’t more publishers embracing the iPad as a disruptive platform? Out of the Top 20 highest-circulation magazines, only 6 have iPad apps of any kind — and, of […]
We know birds raise their voices to make themselves heard in the noisy big city, but for the first time there is evidence that they may even be evolving as a result of city living.
Engineers at Cornell University have developed a form of turbine-free wind power called Vibro-Wind.
The fourth part of Big Think’s Farsight 2011 event discussed what future search experiences might be like. People instinctively want to interact with technology in ways that feel natural to […]
We’ve talked a lot about volcanoes in other parts of the world, but now we have two US volcanoes making some news (although neither because they’re having a large eruption): […]