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Men financially dependent on their female partner cheat more often, while financially dependent women look elsewhere less frequently, says a study on income disparity and infidelity.
"The accusation that Israel has colonialist roots because of its connection to the British Mandate is ironic, since most of the Arab states owe their origins to European powers."
"It is a widely held stereotype that children who grow up without brothers or sisters may be 'oddballs' or 'misfits.' But new research undermines that notion." Only children adapt by their teens.
The economic recession of the past few years has had a real effect on the way fiction writers are writing, says novelist Rick Moody. Writers are more “desperate” than they […]
The New Yorker chronicles the artistic development of Bob Dylan parallel to his run-ins with The Beat writers in Greenwich Village, and particularly his lasting friendship with Allen Ginsberg.
"Are we making fewer discoveries than in the past? Can war make us cleverer? The answers lie in scientometrics, the field of research that puts scientists under the microscope."
"To put it bluntly, the bean counters are out of their depth." David Rieff says insistence on strict accountability in foreign aid programs means losing hearts and minds in Afghanistan.
America's ability to sap its intellectuals, from Twain to King, of their true revolutionary fervor reaches an apex with Jack London. The beloved author lived a dark and revolutionary life.
Presidents Kennedy and Eisenhower differed in their view of the military. Kennedy advocated American dominance; Eisenhower, a more limited force. In which direction are we headed?
New polls from Gallup show that commuting adversely affects physical and emotional health. Those with longer commutes suffer back and neck pain and worry more than non-commuters.
"Mathematicians are facing a stark choice—embrace monstrous infinite entities or admit the basic rules of arithmetic are broken." The New Scientist on mathematic's new uncertainty.
Judge Richard Posner supports a value-added tax as part of an overall tax reform plan to encourage entrepreneurial development and avoid increasing the debt burden on the future.
"A team of MIT engineers has devised a way to deliver the necessary drugs by smuggling them on the backs of the cells sent in to fight the tumor." The procedure reduces health risks.
The idea that knowledge produces fact while imagination produces fiction is wrong, says a professor of logic at Oxford. Imagination is crucial to fundamental cognitive abilities.
This past week, three top experts stopped by the Big Think offices for a video interview: behavioral neurologist Antonio Damasio, C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup, and kidnapping victim Stanley Alpert. USC […]
While Italy is now famous for its use of the red tomato on pizzas and pastas, the food was introduced the country relatively recently. A historian on how we all came to love the tomato.
"Contrary to the Machiavellian cliché, nice people are more likely to rise to power. Then something strange happens: Authority atrophies the very talents that got them there."
"We think of writing as an author’s cognitive output, but it has a corporeal dimension—writing is an embodied practice." The Smart Set on the loss of novelists' female transcriptionists.
German architect Christoph Ingenhoven says the attitude which defines modernism is against superfluous design and that many Asian cities are modernizing in all the wrong ways.
"Sometimes it is possible to do good only in secret." Princeton's Peter Singer believes that complete transparency is utopian, but that a more transparent world is generally desirable.