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Big Think Live Blogging: “Internet: Ideas at the Frontier”
Big Think will be live blogging from Harvard Law School today, and it’s a seminar you wont want to miss. Entitled “Internet: Ideas at the Frontier,” the seminar hosted by […]
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hedge Funds
The Obama administration has announced a plan to join forces with private equity firms and hedge funds to forge public-private partnerships to reverse the housing and credit crisis. This comes […]
You Know Things Are Bad When Gold is Hot
It’s crisis time again and that means boom time for gold! In December, an ounce of gold was selling for about $800. By the third week in February, it was […]
What A Low Life
Expository essay describing the power of bacteria as it relates to the damage it can do to human beings.
The Timeless Appeal of a Tech Company With No Revenues
Getting offered $500 million for a company that doesn’t even have a revenue stream would seem like a pretty good deal especially in a bad economy. But it wasn’t good […]
How You Can Become as Happy as a Dutch Teenager
In addition to legalized marijuana, the world’s largest tulip industry, and an insanely high quality of life, the Netherlands can also count some of the world’s happiest children according to […]
Elizabeth Alexander in the Big Think Studio Today
Inaugural poetess and Professor of African-American Studies at Yale Elizabeth Alexander is sitting down with Big Think today. She helped ring in the Obama presidency with her poem, “Praise Song […]
Searching for Greatness and Finding It
David Orr raised the question in Sunday’s Times Book Review of what constitutes “greatness” in poetry, writing, “our largely unconscious assumptions work like a velvet rope: if a poet looks […]
Need a Job? Become an Insolvency Lawyer
Law Times, a Canadian legal website, cites a report today from a staffing agency called Robert Half Legal showing that Canadian law firms are “searching for talent in the areas […]
Politico Blogs on Washington’s Twitterati
Patrick Gavin at Politico highlights today Washington’s most influential twitterers. “In Washington, the social networking and microblogging service is quickly becoming part of the daily media diet — and a powerful […]
Will the Economic Meltdown Be Good for the Environment?
Retrofitting the United States with green energy infrastructure presents a multi-trillion dollar herculean challenge to the Obama administration, but one that heralds the renewal of scientific thinking at the national […]
Slumdogs, Oscars and Poverty Porn
It was recently announced that two of the child stars of Slumdog Millionaire would be attending the 81st Oscars ceremony on Sunday night. Joe Morgenstern declared the drama “the film […]
Global Warming, Hurricanes Threaten New York City
The New York Daily News yesterday reports that New York will likely becoome “hotter, rainier and more likely to flood in the coming decades—with sea levels possibly rising more than […]
The Gathering Pension Fund Storm
Every morning, I walk out the door of my K street condo and hook a left at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation on 12th Street. Like clockwork, a kaleidoscope of […]
Why Don’t Northern Europeans Believe in God?
Estonians have branded themselves as the least religious European nation according to a new Gallup poll that lends credence to the notion that faith is closely tied to living standards. […]
Gau Jal More Popular Than Coke Among Hindu Nationalists
Globalpost correspondent Jason Overdorf says there is a new concept in the Indian soft drink market: a cow urine-based beverage touted as the elixir of choice for Hindu nationalists. The […]
A Center-Right God-Fearing Socialist State?
Newsweek tracked Republican chatter recently over how President Obama’s stimulus bill could push the United States further down the slippery slope toward socialism. Despite a rather loose use of the […]
Technology: The Wellbutrin of the Masses
Anyone in need of a moment’s release from our collective recession depression should check out of this piece in today’s Telegraph, which previews some revolutionary new consumer technologies on the […]
Reflections on Athletes and Their Scandals
Lance Armstrong and doping. Marion Jones and steroids. Tanya Harding and a lead pipe. Scandal seems to inevitably follow on the heels of—or, in some cases, preclude—gold medals. So it […]
Republicans Love Stimulus Too!
The chief executive of Cisco, John Chambers, has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s few optimists, proclaiming that the U.S. economy will recover this year. Oh my! An article in […]
Guangzhou Is Looking A Lot Like Lagos
Here’s one demographic that’s been lurking under the surface of the new China: Nigerians living in Guangzhou. Apparently with nothing more than a few yuan in their pockets, Nigerians with […]
In Wake of Downturn, Rethinking Vomit
In the Sunday New York Times Magazine, Deborah Solomon interviewed philosopher J. D. Trout about empathy.During the course of a rather hostile interview, Trout invoked the image of the Roman […]
The Case For a Free and Open Google Earth
The Freakonmics blog yesterday highlighted the tragic absurdity of the Google Earth debate. While some British youth use the site to locate private pools to host illegal parties, evidence suggests […]
The New Latin American Paradigm
After an introduction intended to lower expectations over the progress towards sustainable governance, economic improvement and respect for human rights throughout Latin America, Stephen Haber writes in the Wall Street […]
Barack Obama Polarized Race in America
In the current issue of the Boston Review, Charles H. Stewart III and Stephen Ansolabehere, two MIT professors, argue that the election of Barack Obama was hardly evidence of a […]
Full Functionality Coming Soon
Big Think users can expect to see migration issues as well as other essential functionality issues resolved slowly over the course of the next few days, with full functionality expected […]
The Fabric of Spacetime
Have you ever wondered what the fabric of spacetime is made of? I have. It seems most elusive to scientists. Honestly, from what I can tell, no one has really […]
Is pooping overrated?
I personally enjoy it immensely… but if someone found a way to create food in which everything contained was absorbed, no waste products were included, would you eat it? Would […]
Oxytocin – evolutionary incentive?
Oxytocin is the bonding hormone. There are many ways to release oxytocin – a massage, an orgasm, cuddling, breast feeding, and touch in general. It is the evolutionary glue that […]