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When critic Randall Jarrell mentioned Vermeer in a review of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, Bishop excitedly expressed her joy over someone making the connection. We can only guess how she’d feel […]

2010 is barely halfway through and it’s already been the most disastrous year in modern history. Suddenly, disaster relief becomes not just a playground of humanitarian agency manifestos but a […]

From elaborate dancing displays to incredibly attractive armpits, the animal kingdom is full of colorful ways for males to woo mates.

This summer at The Phillips Collection there’s a different kind of colorblindness going on. White is the “new black,” or at least the color telling the most interesting stories in […]

Grist’s Umbra Fisk (the website’s point person for green living questions) recently revisited the toilet issue and doled out some very important water-saving tips: sink a half-gallon of water in […]

Officials in Russia have decided to stop funding KVERT – the body that monitors and responds to volcanic eruptions in eastern Russia. This is bad news.

Captain Mike Ellis of Venice, Louisana describes how BP is incinerating endangered sea turtles in its attempt to burn off spilled oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico near the […]

The journalist, campaigner and on-air reporter for the Iranian Press TV channel in London, recently became a Muslim. Here she talks about Islam, the West and her brother-in-law’s legacy.

At a briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Stanford University communication professor Jon Krosnick presented the best analysis to date estimating the impact of “ClimateGate” on public perceptions of climate change […]

Be an individual, just like everyone else. Laurie Essig at True/Slant says American culture prioritizes creativity in romantic relationships in a way that dictates conformity and materialism.

Martha Nussbaum says that when the President and politicians publicly admire the education systems of China and Singapore, they support learning systems at odds with an open society.

The snow in DC is preventing the usual Smithsonian/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report from getting posted – but fear not because here it is!

n Genetically modified crops are controversial and indeed have been banned in several locations because of concerns that they may cause unintended, as yet unforeseen and potentially hazardous consequences. These […]

Everyone is mesmerized by Apple’s ability to revolutionize the way we think about IT products. With the iPhone, for example, Apple has morphed a mere communication device into a platform […]

In this guest post on Colorado’s Amendment 62, a ballot initiative that, if passed, would grant full legal rights to fertilized human eggs by classifying embryos as ‘persons’ under the […]

n Francesca Berrini: ‘With Us Or Against Us’, torn map collage on canvas, 12 x 9 in. n Maps are instruments, but in the eye of map aficionados they can also […]

Experts commonly accept the Hudson River School, led by Thomas Cole, as the first true American art school and movement. They looked at the American landscape and saw something the […]

At 678.051 km² (261.797 sq. mi), Texas is the largest of the 48 contiguous states. With a population of over 23 million, it’s also the second most populous, after California. […]

The Treaty of London gave the eastern half to the Netherlands, creating its curious southern panhandle

If you listen to the entire video of Shirley Sherrod’s infamous NAACP remarks, somewhere around the 14 minute mark, your stomach will start to curdle as you hear her describe […]

In the White House, can a white conservative do more to restrain anti-Islamic bigotry than an African-American progressive? Writing on the anniversary of 9/11, a couple of writers Saturday argued […]

I recently received some samples of the Eyjafjallajökull ash – and you’d be surprised what you can learn about an eruption from just popping the ash under a microscope.

Tell your children not to write anything down. Tell them that this phenomenon, this global mania for being public about every aspect of our lives, is something that will catch […]

We all think we know what it means to be conscious, but it is hard to pin this down in a precise, scientific way—as USC neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains in our video. Every weekday in September, Big Think will offer a new insight into the human brain in our new “Going Mental” blog.

“Painting is a battlefield… about what is, what is not, what ought to be, what I like, what I hate, what I love,” says Argentine artist Guillermo Kuitca, subject of […]

They even made it through the Northwest Passage

What would you do to give your child a head-start in life? If you’re one of the millions of so-called “helicopter parents” we discussed previously in our series, the answer […]

A new partnership between design hotshop IDEO and furniture-maker Steelcase aims to address one of the biggest design challenges of traditional classrooms – the static, linear and restrictive nature of […]

Up until just a few hundred years ago most people thought that the Universe was a stable, static place that had been here forever and would continue forever. Today we […]

What excites the legendary computer scientist about the future? In a word: graphics.