Like most people, I hate paying taxes. I’d love to keep all the money I earn, and receive government services for free. But I nevertheless have argued that if anything […]
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Sometime very soon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban ki moon, is set to announce his intention to run for a second five year term. In this he […]
The reactor situation in Japan suffered yet another setback yesterday, with water levels in Unit 2 registering 10 million times normal levels.
You’re about to hand laptops over to their 12– and 13–year-old children. What do you tell your school’s parents? Here are some excerpts from what Rob McCrae, ICT Director for the […]
The cover of the May 16, 2011 issue of The New Yorker features a cartoon by Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu in which the image of recently killed terrorist Osama Bin Laden […]
From low-tech gadgets enabling livelihoods in remote African villages to satellites that spy on human rights abusers, a look at some (not necessarily sexy) technologies shaping the future.
“Satire works by inference,” cartoonist G.B. Trudeau says in Brian Walker’s new book Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau. “What you condemn should reveal what you value, what you […]
Prehistoric humans, along with Neanderthals and Homo antecessor, made meals of each other, suggests new research on human teeth marks found on prehistoric human bones.
This week, the USDA unveiled a new icon for healthy eating, MyPlate, a successor to the Food Pyramid and MyPyramid. There’s a lot to like about the new visual. The […]
We are currently living in the “learning decade,” according to entrepreneur Sam Herring. Here are some of the most exciting startups that are trying to capitalize on the new currency of ideas.
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 […]
Our decisions matter. You don’t need me to tell you that. Of course they matter. It almost seems a tautology, a restatement of the obvious, of the very definition of “decision.” And yet, even though we make decisions at every point in our lives . . .
I don’t think I have ever told you about the time that a man I was seeing felt the need to confess to me about many years of regular prostitute […]
The Warmth Of Many Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is such a good book I am almost tempted to go back to school to become a professor just so I can […]
Today marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most significant eruptions (video – archived from news broadcasts) of the last century (or more) – the 1991 eruption of Pinatubo in the […]
I think it’s time to add the behavioral immune system to the long list of subconscious influences on our choices.
Looking to past elections to predict the outcome of one soon to come doesn’t usually work that well. Back in October 2008, I looked to eight past elections to try […]
Marc Goodman tells Big Think that in the future “the virtual agents of good and evil will do battle in cyberspace–making this a very interesting field to be in!”
Amy Davidson’s post about the WikiLeaks Guantanamo release is an excellent example of writing short, with feeling—and meaning. One reason so many of the New Yorker blogs work well with […]
Today’s papers are full of fears of what tomorrow’s anniversary (Brian lives in an alternate universe one day ahead of the rest of us – like some little-remembered sitcom I […]
It may be a bit weird to use the word ‘elegant’ to describe something with the name “Peepoo” but that’s exactly what it is – an absolutely brilliant and elegant […]
I’ve been asked whether I should reconsider my recent praise of AMERICAN IDOL as an admirably and characteristically American mixture of wisdom and consent. Although I can’t really speak as […]
Both too much and too little testosterone increase risk-taking and ambiguity tolerance.
Mathematics seems to be a universal language and when you stop to think about it, that’s quite remarkable. Mark Vernon asks if mathematics is a divine language?
The aftershocks of the controversy surrounding the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery’s decision to drop David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from their exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire […]
One of the more exciting frontiers in geology is that of planetary volcanology – that is, how do volcanoes work on other planets. We know at least a few in […]
So here’s an engaging and most instructive lecture by the legendary Harvey Mansfield, probably the only member of the government faculty at Harvard who votes Republican. Mansfield, of course, is famous […]
The fabled planetary alignment predicted to occur in 2012 is actually happening right now. Is this a sign of the Apocalypse, or just eye candy for stargazers?
Four different types of radiation tend to accompany a nuclear accident like the Fukushima meltdown. Here, Dr. Kaku discusses the effects of each on the human body.
Well, if you are Ra’id al-Harbi, whose last will and testament was posted to jihadi forums over the weekend, you ride your camel nine hours across the border to Yemen. […]