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The newest essays, interviews, and features from Big Think.
We love our American President for his gift with words, and we learn from him in how he uses them—in articulating war, in assailing Wall Street, or even in making […]
While people wonder daily about the future of the newspaper, music and publishing industries, the television business seems to be surviving on its own terms. Sure it has lost revenue […]
Morality is an indirect consequence of evolution that balances the needs of individual survival and satisfaction with those of society, writes a contributor at Psychology Today.
Our age's outright attack on God may just be a reactionary response from an "ideology of reason" that imitates the dogmatic methods it is critical of, says The Spectator.
The supposed infallibility of DNA test results, due to individuals' unique gene sequences, creates a cult of unaccountability that can lead to false convictions.
The preservation of "fundamental rights" by a nation's judiciary is an old habit of tempering democracy with aristocracy, writes James Grant of the U of Cambridge.
Fred Donner, a historian at the U of Chicago, has published a history of Islam that demonstrates the faith's original openness to outside members.
While Europe is no longer the colonial power it once was, and though its politics are mired in seemingly small issues, its social values provide the continent its staying power.
If you live in a city, it's probably loud; the effects of noise pollution fall disproportionately on the poor and damage our psychology as well as our physiology.
Another lengthy analysis has been done on the over prescription of psychotropic drugs in America: is the tide turning against our favorite little pills?
As genetic research advances, the risk of attributing too many qualities, such as genius, to our genes dangerously downplays individual potential for achievement.
Richard Dawkins lets go some invective against Pope Benedict XVI when asked by the Washington Post if the pontiff should be held responsible for the Church's sex abuse scandals.
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The developer of the first portable cellular telephone discovered that he wanted to be an engineer when he was just four years old. His homemade magnifying glass sparked a career […]
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The pioneering HIV/AIDS researcher used high school math in creating a drug “cocktail” to combat the worldwide epidemic.
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The mathematical physicist reflects upon his untraditional math and science education in Belize, and talks about how Einstein’s theory of relativity is a “profound connection” that can inspire young people.
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The U.S. is now incarcerating on a level so out of sync with it’s own history—and with what other industrial democracies are doing—that the system is bound to change.
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Sexual victimization in prison now has come to constitute a significant portion of that in society as a whole.
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The massive rise in the prison population isn’t one of the primary reasons that crime has decreased.
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We once hoped criminals would come out of prison better than they had entered. Not anymore.
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Looking carefully at the history of Texas makes us rethink the history of crime and punishment and incarceration in the country as a whole.