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Responsible for feeding the nation, farm labor should be an honored work and respected with livable wages and good working conditions. Lest we bite the hand that feeds, says the L.A. Times.
A new Midwest coal plant marketed as a source for cheap, clean energy is expected to raise utility bills and be the largest source of carbon dioxide in a quarter century, says The Chicago Tribune.
"For conservative hold-outs, soccer may be the most capitalist game going." The xenophobia that fears soccer as a socialist export is unfounded, says The Christian Science Monitor.
After pillaging the housing and credit markets, financial speculators have turned their gaze to chocolate. The price of cocoa has increased 150 percent in the last 18 months and producers are crying foul.
The democratic ideal of a well informed public fit to govern itself is not in line with recent behavioral research which finds people are more bullheaded when facts contradict their beliefs.
"The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium," says David Brooks.
"One of the most widely quoted and dissected public intellectuals on the planet is also one of the most inscrutable." A colleague of Christopher Hitchens on the author's personal reticence.
After Oscar Grant, some are looking to the U.K. as a model for gun-free police forces.
Lola Adesioye at The Guardian thinks non-lethal tasers could be the ideal solution.
"Today's communes are a far cry from the free-loving, dope-smoking hippy havens of the Sixties. But can they really solve the problems of the modern world?"
"Though Iranian officials have only just now designated the mullet as a form of 'Western cultural invasion,' the haircut has always been with us." Slate gives a history of the hairdo.
"The financial crisis in America isn't over," says James Galbraith. The renowned economist explains how restoring the rule of law on Wall Street should be the nation's top priority.
Microsoft's Imagine Cup challenges high school and college students to develop apps that address the world's most pressing problems. The result is humanitarian mobile devices.
The online cartographic authority, Google Maps has the unenviable task of drawing borders across the most hotly contested territories on earth. Sometimes the company riles border disputes.
"Higher marginal tax rates mean more resources for job-creating, wage-generating public investments." Slate.com says liberals agree: higher tax rates are a step away from debt.
"Plato imagined philosopher-kings guarding his utopia. Here in Aspen, we have Bill Gates." The Atlantic says Gates' unique solutions to global problems were on display at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Violinist and humanitarian Midori Goto stopped by the Big Think offices today. She played show and tell with her priceless violin, made in 1734, which she said she thinks of […]
It’s a bit of an overstatement to say that Americans don’t care at all about what’s happening outside of our borders, but Jim Hoge, the longtime editor of Foreign Affairs […]
In the history of the Universe, life—and human life in particular—has not been around for very long. But University of Michigan theoretical astrophysicist Katie Freese believes it’s possible that life […]
The Jewish community in Britain represents only one-half of one percent of the population, but Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks believes it need not have a commensurate voice in the “human […]
"The spread of digital technology comes at a cost: it exposes armies and societies to digital attack," says The Economist, which thinks cyberspace must be treated as a theater of war.