The Latest from Big Think

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“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different,” wrote T.S. Eliot in a […]
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China accounts for a growing percentage of the world economy and a substantial share of global economic growth. But do its currency and trade practices keep other countries from growing […]
Can and should we try to drill deep into the earth, past the crust and into the mantle? We've tried in the past but haven't gotten far. If the earth was an orange, we'd have barely zested it.
As Europe takes the lead on the Libyan intervention, it's a powerful signal of America's weakening global influence. Peter Beinart on Obama's Jeffersonian turn—and the end of an empire.
As Middle East regimes try to stifle dissent by censoring the Internet, the U.S. faces an uncomfortable reality: its companies provide much of the technology used to block websites.
Germany and Pakistan may be apples and oranges, but the point is that the current artistic and creative ferment in Pakistan is not sustainable, just as the Weimar Republic fell to fascism.
Forbes' Gordon Chang echoes American politicians' calling for military intervention in Syria. Our foreign policy interests are at stake, he says, and it's not worth waiting for international consensus.
An Amnesty International reports says that while opposition to the death penalty has gained much global support, powerful countries like the U.S. and China continue to execute convicts.
As the world rallies behind the Libyan population, it is hard to understand why the Ivory Coast—where civil war is brewing—is just a footnote in international news and on the diplomatic agenda.
An E.U. bailout of Portugal now seems inevitable. But at some point, E.U. taxpayers are likely to tire of bailing out nations like Portugal, which seem unwilling to curb their spendthrift ways.
By day, Aleksei N. Navalny is a lawyer in Moscow. By night, he runs a website that exposes corruption in the Russian energy sector. A friend of the people, he is making government enemies.
Analysts in the U.S. and Europe did not expect revolutions in the Arab world, and those who did, did not expect them to come from such unlikely actors or be this widespread and peaceful.
Three of the world's great armies have suddenly conspired to support a group of people in the coastal cities of Libya, known, vaguely, as "the rebels". But what do we really know about them?
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America is the second largest economy behind the European Union, but still far ahead of China and Japan. In what sectors is America going to innovate, lead and win?
Where is Twin Peaks? The fictional town at the centre of the eponymous TV series isn't too hard to pinpoint. But things aren't so clear cut as they seem. 
The reactor situation in Japan suffered yet another setback yesterday, with water levels in Unit 2 registering 10 million times normal levels.
A deadly Egyptian cobra is AWOL from the Bronx Zoo. Anybody got a spare mongoose? [Photo credit: Pandiyan, Creative Commons.]
I don't know if this is such an appropriate post for Sunday morning. A study from Northwestern shows that people who regularly attend religious services are 50% more likely to become […]
This study just out in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin claims to have found a general societal prejudice against women who breast-feed. Reports about the work concurred. But I think […]
It has been a few weeks since the new activity at Kilauea along the Kamoamoa Fissure stopped, but little else started back up along the volcano's east rift. The Kamoamoa […]