The Latest from Big Think

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Obama's deadline for closing Guantanamo having passed, "it's unclear, as we sit today, whether it's gonna close at all," says Matt D'Aloisio, the founder of Witness Against Torture.
Climate change skeptics recently gathered in Chicago to exchange ideas and invectives over the largely accepted claims about the dangers of global warming.
In 1504 no less a historic name than Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, brought together the two greatest artists of the time to decorate the walls of the Great […]
Here’s the tricky thing about ozone: we want lots of it up high in the upper atmosphere, where it blocks radiation and protects us, but we want as little of […]
“And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” Crosby, Stills, and Nash sang in “Woodstock,” the song that tried to capture the spirit of the generation-defining gathering. For […]
When pressed, Rand Paul now says that he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act. But Paul, who just won the Republican nomination for Senate in Kentucky, does have […]
Rebecca Mead's New Yorker profile of conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart repeats the false claim that his protege, provocateur videographer James O'Keefe, impersonated a pimp to infiltrate the offices […]
"Our thesis is that the sun people, the African family of warm communal hope, meets an antithesis, the vision of ice people, Europeans, colonizers, oppressors, the cold, rigid element in […]
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed By John Valliant Knopf Canada (2005) I picked up a copy of John Valliant's "The Golden Spruce" in a […]
In the age of greenwashing and eco-everything, it's becoming increasingly hard to standardize and fairly assess what constitutes a green product. The USDA has attempted to do this for food […]
Today we release the second installment from our interview with Bjørn Lomborg, Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. In this clip he talks about the issue of sustainability in a world […]
Every baby born today in the Western world has a life expectancy of about 100 years, which means it will be alive in 2110. It’s nearly impossible to forecast in […]
Research completed by The Journal for Advertising suggests Americans have become increasingly self-confident and individualistic in the last three decades.
Corey Robin at The Nation likens the late Ayn Rand's continued success in America to the same misguided and lazy analysis that has made Glenn Beck a popular voice.
By the time you read this, I will be laying out my arsenal for the world’s biggest water gun fight. A few years ago, I happened to be on Tybee […]
Meghan Daum at the L.A. Times says that despite Sarah Palin's political stances, the former governor is entitled to be a feminist as long as she proclaims herself one.
Hollywood's depiction of events like the war in Iraq, the global financial crisis and religious extremism are taking center stage at the Cannes Film Festival; here is the NYT review.
In a rare affront to tradition, civil servants in one Japanese region will soon be required to shave their beard after complaints were registered over the powerful facial hair.
English-only policies run contrary to America's concept of liberty and fears of a multilingual society ignore many of the world's nations which officially recognize multiple languages.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali thinks the American Academy of Pediatrics' proposal to aid in female genital mutilation gives tacit support to a practice which should be condemned outright.