It’s commonplace to imagine the people of the period we know now as the High Renaissance, centered in Italy from the 1490s to the 1520s, looking at the works of […]
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“The space program, including ostensible civil projects, supports China’s growing ability to deny or degrade the space assets of potential adversaries and enhances China’s conventional military capabilities.”
Laura Deming, a 17 year-old undergraduate, was paid $100,000 by a California venture capitalist to leave her university. The offer is part of a bold business/education experiment.
By Chris Arkenberg In what amounts to a fairly shocking reminder of how quickly our technologies are advancing and how deeply our lives are being woven with networked computation, security […]
Your clothes may become the medium through which all the world’s electronic devices are connected. Soft screens woven into fabric may mean one less thing you must carry with you.
Google-funded research shows America’s potential for extracting geothermal energy is huge, but that harvesting it could cost a lot and even cause small earthquakes in the process.
There’s been some interesting responses to my post on our obligation to eat headless, legless chickens (aside from the vague namecalling and useless expressions of outrage and disgust. Something is […]
Big Think hit the streets (the intersection of Wall & Broad, NYC) during the AM rush hour this Friday, May 18th with a guerilla theater piece for Facebook IPO day. […]
There are circumstances where violence is necessary, says Andre Dubus III, author of Townie, but it always takes a heavy spiritual toll.
President Obama has unveiled his proposed 10-year budget today, and while there’s nothing particularly shocking included for those who have been following the ongoing debate between the White House and […]
America’s most powerful physics experiment, the Fermilab particle accelerator in Batavia, Illinois, is planning to test the results of a European experiment that claims to have seen the impossible.
When does an artist become a phenomenon? It’s a rare moment on the scale of seeing a new star emerge in the night sky. Already a rising art world star, […]
Our neighbor to the north is quickly finding itself beneath a new spotlight as a world energy power. Attempts to finalize pipeline deals to export crude from Canada’s tar sands have begun.
In the first of my posts summing up the Reason Rally, there was a commenter who said that gathering on the National Mall was “sink[ing] to the level of the […]
Item:A study finds that between 1970 and 2009, melanoma skin cancer cases increased eight times in women aged 18-39, and four times in men, apparently from increasing use of tanning […]
It’s Sunday morning, and I’m writing this on the train from Washington, D.C. back to New York. I’m exhausted, washed out, and my calves are two knots of pain from […]
Increases in government spending, reflected by the ballooning global debt, have only papered over a serious structural problem in the economies of industrial democracies.
This is a tale of two drones. One is the stuff of crazy science fiction. The other is a reality. Now here’s the twist: individuals are making DIY drones a reality while large government-sponsored researchers are the ones writing the science fiction.
Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, has just released his eighth book, Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World (New York: Portfolio: 2012). When he first […]
Tom Jacobs of Miller-McCune reports on a study from Scott Eidelman, et al, finding that “Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism.” Here’s Jacobs’ summary: A research team led by University of […]
What’s the Big Idea? The solution to global poverty, according to Jeffrey SachsDirector of The Earth Institute and professor at Columbia University, is a mix of government and the private and […]
What if all the study habits you were taught in school are wrong? Psychologists now say not to take notes, to stop studying for extended periods and to study in many different places.
Figures like Bill Clinton and Arianna Huffington have spoken publicly about the deteriorating effects of sleep loss in our personal, political and work lives. When will we learn to rest well?
If you don’t like the weather in New England, wait a minute. So goes the saying that is loosely attributed to Mark Twain. The same cannot be said of the […]
There is only one measure of time that matters to the current Internet generation: the here and now. The Cult of Now is influencing everything that we do and every […]
The Being Human Conference, which took place at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts this weekend, was designed to explore the science of human experience. The speakers ranged from neuroscientists, […]
In a previous post, I indicated what I consider the “dangerous” realisation that there is no top-down meaning; that our actions aren’t found to be important by anyone (or One) […]
We generally assume that if we use more energy-efficient machines we will use less energy. If we install energy-efficient light bulbs in place of incandescent bulbs, for example, it will […]
Under an agreement negotiated today, all 27 European Union countries will sign no new oil contracts with Iran and stop importing all Iranian oil by July 1. How will Iran respond?
The Economist hosted its “Ideas Economy” event this week at the Berkeley Haas School of Business to talk about disruptive technologies, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. The focus of the event […]