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In the continuing flap over the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to provide birth control under the new health care law, both sides have failed to come to grips with the complexities of religious liberty.
Diversity in all senses encourages creativity and innovation by fusing together two or more ideas that are traditionally separate. Specialists are often too narrowly focused.
At the annual Loebner Prize Competition, robots compete against humans trying to convince judges they are actually human. Might the judges determine your boss is actually a robot?
3mins
Michael Gazzaniga, one of the world's leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, argues, "We can understand brains to the nth degree, but that's not going to in any way interfere with […]
This semester, students from a diversity of majors at American University are participating in an advanced seminar I am teaching on science and environmental communication. For the first part of the […]
On China's microblogging site Weibo, rumors of Kim Jong-un's death surfaced earlier today when bloggers posted that he was assassinated in Beijing. Media outlets have yet to issue any official […]
Thinking of starting a business, but unsure of where you will find the cash to open the doors? Here are a few tips on how to launch a business with little to no money out of pocket.
Welcome to a new feature on the Floating University blog, FU Asks, where we open up the academic debate on our e-learning platform to the Big Think community. This week […]
Question: What do VCRs, Betamax players, condom use in Thailand, and hybrid corn seeds in Iowa have in common? Answer: The adoption of these innovations each followed a logical, predictable […]
An evolutionary biologist named Jaroslav Flegr argues that many house cats carry organisms that invade our brains, leading to mental disorders like schizophrenia as well as causing suicides and car crashes.
It's no secret that Americans spend too much. So what can they learn from China, a country where households save over a third of its income for a rainy day?
2mins
Why have representations of Italian American culture been so far removed from Italy?
It’s a sad but true fact that most data that’s generated or collected—even with considerable effort—never gets any kind of serious analysis.
Dean Kamen's Slingshot is "a prophylactic disguised as a drinking fountain," write Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler in a new book.
I saw a tweet yesterday—“How Obama Could Have Killed Bin Laden Harder”—that cracked me up. Intrigued, I clicked on the hashtag #CPACpanels and saw several people who populate my Twitter […]
The American myth of the lone innovator, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, no longer fits the complexity of technological progress or the interconnectedness of communication systems.
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.
Anne Carson writes books that refuse to be just one thing. Autobiography of Red is a verse novel framed as a work of classical scholarship; fittingly, its hero is a […]
Amidst growing public perception that Facebook is using us to make billions of dollars using data we’re freely posting online, there is another sinking suspicion: Web startups we don't keep […]