MIT engineers have completed a four year project to develop a car with foldable wings, in other words, a flying car. The vehicle is powered by unleaded gasoline and goes for $200,000.

"Do we inflate the menace of Islamic Jihad in order to justify the war in Afghanistan?" Robert Wright wonders if our simplification of Muslim motives squeezes relevant facts out of picture.

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 […]

“It’s time we Met,” reads several posters in the latest marketing campaign of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  A recent piece by Peter Aspden titled “Met […]

Elena Kagan’s confirmation should hold about as much suspense as the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain back in the fall of 2008. As in absolutely none. […]

Last month, I had the honor of greeting my colleague, Stephen Hawking, famed cosmologist, in New York, where he was being honored by the World Science Festival for all his scientific […]

In the disputed presidential election in 2000, it was hard to say just who won the vote in the electoral college. But it was clear Al Gore won the national […]

Jere Van Dyk, who was imprisoned by the Taliban for 45 days, offers some cautionary advice to the new commander of the Afghanistan War.

Journalist Jere Van Dyk stopped by the Big Think offices today to recount his gripping tale of survival after being captured and imprisoned by the Taliban in 2008. Van Dyk, […]

Over the past few months, we've looked at how designers are addressing the vision-impaired – from low-cost eyeglasses to Braille-inspired obejcts for the blind to an innovative diagnostic test using […]

This then is one of the most memorable photographs of the 1960s, or at least here, a depiction of one of the most eponymous pictures of that decade. The original […]

It seems the nation that prides itself on doing things just a little differently has succumbed to the newspaper industry’s woes just like everyone else. The French paper of record […]

Humans are hard-wired to make bad investment decisions, says Legg Mason Capital Management's chief investment strategist, Michael Mauboussin. It's in our nature to follow along with a bearish or bullish […]

Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, believes the most important aspect of any company is its culture. That's why he was so disappointed with his first company, LinkExchange—and why he […]

Alan Abramowitz is the Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory, and a renowned expert on national politics and elections. His expertise includes election forecasting models, party realignment in the […]

"The Supreme Court on Monday loosened the limits on the kinds of inventions that are eligible for patent protection," reports The Washington Post. Intangible goods are increasingly eligible.

Though the Islamic world has "fallen behind" recent scientific times, the oil-rich states of the Middle East are seeking to diversify their economies. The New Scientist says science and technology appear promising.

Some false beliefs, such as paranoia, are ill-suited to evolutionary success, but some, like extreme optimism in the face of insurmountable odds, are a boon, says Scientific American.

Starting today, the non-profit digital library Internet Archive will give the public access to over a million public domain books and thousands of contemporary copyrighted e-books. Copyright questions abound.

NPR recounts how a modest scientific conclusion about classical music's effect on spatial reasoning led to a nation obsessed with making their unborn babies listen to Mozart.