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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
Standardized tests are supposed to measure innate abilities. The subject of your last conversation, the lead story on the news last night, the pictures on the wall at the test […]
With the popularity of the Internet and self-publishing, Garrison Keillor laments the end of the glamorous age of publishing from a rooftop in Tribeca.
The strange behavior of two suppermassive black holes may change the way scientists understand the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
Robert Fisk thinks that political speak has taken over journalism and that accuracy of fact has become dominated by competing historical narratives that favor power over truth.
The Australian anthropologist Sarah Thornton has completed a study of the art world and traced its hierarchies and status-seekers just as she did the London party scene.
The incomprehensibility of quantum physics is responsible for the rise of postmodern social theories which reject the notion of a stable, immutable truth.
Mark Twain asked that his biography not be published until 100 years after his death. "He was certainly a man who knew how to make people want to buy a book," says its publisher.
The good news is Americans are living longer than ever; the bad news is this increases the chances of getting Alzheimer's, and no preventative treatment has proven successful.
Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg says Germany would do better to leave the Euro currency than impose domestic market reforms like bans on short-selling and speculation.
Naturally occurring bacteria, which are the only real solution to the Gulf oil spill, are much more effective than any lab-grown microbe—further proof that man cannot best mother nature.
Without disputing the immorality of Confederate slavery, the role it played in igniting the Civil War remains debatable among historians a century and half since Appomattox.
“How could you conceivably cut yourself off from other men and from the life they bring you in such abundance? In the name of what uncaring, ivory-tower kind of attitude?” […]
It looks like it may finally be the end of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The policy, which dates back to 1993, was a Clintonian compromise meant to prevent […]
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James Randi has shunned faith since he was a kid spending collection plate money on ice cream. "If my dad and mom are up there someplace… I ask them to […]
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The Yale computer guru decries the dangerous trend of know-it-all scientists (Richard Dawkins?) telling people that "religion is trash."
Human beings give their attention readily to people who already have it. It doesn't matter if a guy won fame for his action movies, people will listen to his advice […]
"We may not have free will, but we have 'free wont', which is as good as saying we're not totally deterministic. So far so good," writes Dr. David Rock.
Should the next generation learn Chinese? "Despite China’s rise, Chinese isn’t the world language of the future; the writing system simply makes it far too hard," says Robert Green.
“Overuse injuries, overtraining and burnout among child and adolescent athletes are a growing problem in the United States," says pediatrician Dr. Joel S. Brenner.
"Dubbed the 'best-known Muslim in all of Europe,' a 'Muslim Martin Luther,' and 'the prophet of a new Euro-Islam'", Tariq Ramadan is a Muslim reformist worth considering.