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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
"In fairy tales, 'good' triumphs over 'evil,' but how this happens isn’t simple. It’s quite common for traditional fairy tales to have complicated, even troubling, conclusions."
Dating research shows that when we are free to choose our conversation topics we gravitate toward an easy to maintain balance that no one actually enjoys or benefits from.
Would it be a classic pearl handled six shooter? A double barreled shotgun with a hand carved stock? An AK-47 semi-automatic assault carbine with laser sights? Or would he simply […]
“What happens if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it?” Willard Spiegelman asks intriguingly in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. “What happens if […]
Excellent: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin (D) have introduced legislation to require so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” in New York City to disclose that they are not […]
Tension was evident as humanists and atheists gathered this weekend, reported Mitchell Landsberg at the Los Angeles Times. At issue among the attendees at the annual conference of the Council […]
New evidence from speed-dating trials helps untangle the reasons why segregation persists in dating and marriage.
Being a college professor has definitely made me realize how many students are “terrified” (their words) about math and science. Many have gotten the idea that you need to be […]
"American foreign policy stands on the brink of substantial belt-tightening." Professor of American Foreign Policy Michael Mandelbaum on the effects of the recession.
One problem with making public policy on marijuana is the drug's unpredictable effects: dosage amount, the person and the state they are in upon consumption vary widely.
"When Democrats jump onto China bashing, they miss the real causes of the recession, and worse, legitimize us-vs.-them thinking." Robert Reich on global economics.
"Ellington had many of the traits one associates more readily with the founders of religious orders or political movements than with lone artists absorbed in self-expression."
"Scientists have shown what many dog owners have suspected—while some canines are joyfully optimistic about life, others have a tendency for gloomy pessimism."
Doctors have injected human embryonic stem cells into a patient partially paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, marking the beginning of the promising but controversial therapy.
"The process of speaking two or more languages appears to enable skills to better cope with the early symptoms of memory-robbing diseases, including Alzheimer's."
In Germany, utility companies pay homeowners and businesses for power generated by alternative energies that is fed into the electricity grid. Should the U.S. take note?
"Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career that he kept largely hidden from view but that rivaled and sometimes surpassed his devotion to celestial mechanics."
"Peter Diamond's Nobel prize in economics is an unusual example of useful economics combined with timely politics." The Guardian on the would-be government appointee.
“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over [Australia] in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, […]
“I tend to think of the exhibitions I do as a loose accumulation of paintings with no single theme—like a variety show,” artist Glenn Brown said in 2007. “A comedy […]