bigthinkeditor

bigthinkeditor

The Economist's Charlemagne columnist declares Belgium to be a dying country and, for the first time, there've been no accusations of exaggeration. What's going on?
China could be on the cusp of a new movement that markedly improves the lives of its workers, but the country is at an incredibly fragile moment, explains Leo Hindery, Jr.
Bernhard Zand explains why a "frustrated Ankara is turning away from the West and looking east toward Hamas and Iran."
Research shows good luck superstitions can beneficially affect performance. How? They increase our confidence, explains Lin Edwards.
Most Keynesian economics makes good sense to Tyler Cowen but he has to admit that the principles adhered to in Germany might actually be better than the Keynesian alternatives.
Education, not just sport, has become big business, says Mitch Adams amid the decision to levy heavy sanctions on the University of Southern California’s Athletic Department.
Don't confuse the international confrontation between Islam and the West with the local problem of absorbing Muslims into European societies, says "Infidel" author Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
“I prefer fiction because in fiction I do whatever I want,” says Chilean-American author Isabel Allende, who has published 18 books of fiction, non-fiction and memoirs over the past three […]
"Why do males of some species attend to their offspring prolongedly, while others tend to spring off post-coitally?" asks Natalie Angier. The answer may relate to the varying social role of infants.
"The poor need not always be with us. That goal can be achieved if we ensure that workers are paid enough to feed their families," says The L.A. Times, whose city has pioneered legislation on the living wage.
Charles Krauthammer disputes the Obama administration's claims that Iran is more isolated in the world. Russia, China, Brazil and Turkey have all sought to assist Iran with its energy ambitions.
"Researchers determined that the lunar water likely originated early in the moon's formation history, suggesting that it is, in fact, native to the moon," reports the Christian Science Monitor.
Although this week is Homeopathy Awareness Week, Edzard Ernst at The Guardian finds the medical practice more threatened than ever as scientific establishments attack its medicinal claims.
By all officials estimates, the Earth's population is scheduled to grow rapidly during the coming decades, but this long-term problem ill-suits short term political careers, says The Independent.
Skeptic Michael Shermer thinks we deceive ourselves because "we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns."
Contrary to popular belief, high crop yields created by industrialized farming have greatly slowed global warming by preventing deforestation for new farmland, says a new study from the Carnegie Institution.
"Fossilized corals and lasers beamed at a receding moon have revealed that over the ages the length of time it takes Earth to spin once on its axis has increased significantly."
More legislative oversight is needed to control the unofficial expansion of the U.S. forensic DNA database to ensure that innocent citizens are not unfairly implicated in crimes, says Slate.com.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation today released over two thousand pages of its files on former U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, who died last year after a battle with brain cancer. […]
Against-the-grain linguist Guy Deutscher thinks that language isn't completely a product of nature, but that it influences how we perceive the world and, in turn, how we express it.