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Perhaps the most effective frame used by opponents of nuclear energy is that it is simply not "cost effective." Not only is it wasteful, argue opponents, but government subsidies are […]
We of course have the two robot landers on the surface of Mars (Spirit and Opportunity). The Spirit Rover recently went into hibernation mode and is no longer communicating with […]
"Vision," Stanford's Bill Newsome likes to say, "does not happen in the eye. It happens in the brain." As I mentioned in my last post, this is a general theme […]
Now that August, Big Think's month of thinking dangerously, is over, we'd like you to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to 10 of the radical ideas we presented.
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Parents need to wean themselves off of the idea that they must be constantly available to their child and vice versa.
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Author Lenore Skenazy is tired of helicopter parents messing up their kids.
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At some point in the past thirty years it became taboo to let your kids play outside without supervision. What's with that?
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Lenore Skenazy, who advocates for the free-range kids style of parenting, helps you learn to stop over-obsessing about your children.
From Philip K. Dick to Stephen King, the film and TV industry not only adapt the creative narratives of authors but also lean heavily on their devoted fan base to […]
"How can economic modernization be combined with cultural robustness and social well-being?" Columbia Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs looks at Bhutan for clues to the answer.
"As far as scientists can tell, we humans seem to be the only species that shed tears for emotional reasons." Is there an evolutionary advantage to being inspired to weep?
"If u really r annoyed by the vocabulary of the text generation, it turns out they were doing it in the 19th century—only then they called it emblematic poetry, and it was considered terribly clever."
The Economist questions both the economic and moral justifications for the rising popularity of privately operated state and federal prisons. Contracting-out is not the same as privatization.
While we witness the transition from paper to digital publishing, The Atlantic looks back on ten prior revolutions in literacy from hieroglyphs to Hellenic song to the printing press.
"Walking up the side of buildings like Spiderman could soon be a reality, scientists have claimed." But the new technology was inspired by the gecko rather than the spider.
"A debate on Cartesian dualism has led to radically differing approaches to the treatment of depression." A new book reveals how much is at stake in our understanding of the mind.
"Individuality, like civilization itself, is such a hard-won, fragile thing." David Rieff says comradeship, while often healthy, can have terrible moral consequences in large groups.
Jonah Lehrer at Frontal Cortex explains the most recent housing slump in terms of behavioral psychology: because humans innately fear loss, both sides of the market have stalled.
Technology Review profiles the year's top young innovators under 35—impressive inventions in the fields of computing, web, communications, biomedicine and business are on display.
If you think that a thumbs up in ancient Rome meant that the beaten gladiator would live and that a thumbs down meant death, you can thank Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 […]