What's the Latest Development? As we move toward a more cashless society, the dangers of credit transactions are becoming more apparent as those vulnerable to abusing credit also increase in number. "In the 1970s, fewer than 20 percent of the adult population...
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In a recent commencement address, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered ten suggestions to Princeton graduates ranging from “life is amazingly unpredictable...don’t be afraid to let the drama play out” to “call your mom and dad once in...
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“Workers of the world, unite!” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels bellowed in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, largely in response to the Industrial Revolution (and Second Industrial Revolution) threatening not just the livelihoods but the very lives...
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What's the Latest Development? London-based junior doctors Kapil Sugand and Pedro Campos have created a system that displays 3D animated images of body parts on a large scale, giving medical students a whole new way to absorb information during a lecture....
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Performance artist Erdem Gunduz, now dubbed"The Standing Man", has inspired his Turkish compatriots by taking a stand, literally. He stood silent and staring in Istanbul's Taksim Square for hours, as hundreds of fellow protesters, both those around him...
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I think we should all take a moment to consider the news that everyone who continues to protest in Istanbul’s Taksim square is to be considered a terrorist. Let’s just consider what might happen if something similar ever happened in your home country....
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Superman may have originally been envisioned as a telepathic bald villain bent on world destruction, but he was quickly transformed into a beloved hero of Depression-era America, with his all-American, Christian values of never doing wrong while always...
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In the middle part of my book Drunk Tank Pink I spend quite a lot of time talking about what the presence of other people does to us. So would it matter, for example, if I’m playing chess against a computer or against a man or a woman or someone...
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What's the Latest Development? Last weekend, as part of its Project Loon, Google launched 30 balloons, which together helped provide basic broadband-like Internet access to 50 or so testers in the Christchurch area of New Zealand. The balloons hover...
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Today, The New York Times Science Times section published an article, "Firebrand for Science, and Big Man on Campus", about the career development of Bill Nye (aka, The Science Guy) from a beloved children's entertainer to a zealous advocate for science....
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What's the Latest Development? Going live this week is what may be the world's first reality show that won't air on TV: @SummerBreak follows a group of Los Angeles-area teens as they enjoy their last summer before attending college in the fall. The eight-week...
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We’re already used to describing our online social identity as a “digital tattoo” – something that we carry with us permanently wherever we go. So what if it were now possible to get a real-life digital tattoo that would extend our online social...
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What's the Latest Development? Pakistani parents living abroad who want their children to have the benefit of religious instruction -- ideally without any potential radical influences included -- have the option of paying a teacher via one of hundreds...
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What's the Latest Development? Amid calls in the European Union for more detailed online privacy laws, the Association of French Archivists is pushing back with a petition of their own claiming that allowing individuals to remove personal data from the...
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It’s a fact of life in the 21st century that we’re all very busy. If you do a gut check on yourself, you’d likely admit that you are busier this year than you were last year. Every month seems to go by faster than last month, making us realize...
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There is a tendency for people to think science knows more than it knows. We hear phrases like "gaps in our knowledge" all the time, when in fact what we mainly have is knowledge in our gaps. The vastness of our scientific ignorance is especially evident...
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The anonymous author of the Big Think Neurobonkers blog has published a wee reply to my recent posts arguing that NSA leaker Edward Snowden should be prosecuted: To act on one’s conscience and leak information that is believed to be in the public interest...
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Youth unemployment has reached crisis levels in several European countries: 39% in Italy, 55% in Spain, and 60% in Greece. Now, early retirement, a so-called economic fix that I'd hoped was dead and buried, is being exhumed and put forward as a viable...
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What's the Latest Development? Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who went public with the NSA's clandestine data mining operation, forms part of an increasing crossover between government and private cybersecurity organizations. "As a result of the leaks,...
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What's the Latest Development? The election of moderate Iranian presidential candidate Hassan Rohani represents an opportunity for the West to engage Iran with fresh negotiations over its nuclear energy program, which is feared to shroud more nefarious...
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Consider this individual: She has appeared on ABC’s “What Would you Do?” and is the ambassador for “Healing Hands for Haiti,” which aims to bring rehabilitation medicine to the country. She has attended Westminster College and Brigham Young...
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What's the Latest Development? A massive urban development program, in which the Chinese government aims to relocate 250 million peasant farmers to burgeoning urban centers, is set to begin in earnest this fall. "The government, often by fiat, is replacing...
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I’m writing this blog post from tens of thousands of feet above the midwestern United States, on an airline that I won’t name here. The flight got off to a rocky start, and before we left the airport I had lodged a complaint with the airline via...
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For some years now I've been involved with a small community group. It's a shoe-string organization that depends entirely on volunteers. These curious creatures have a predictable life-cycle. It begins when someone shyly asking if the group needs help,...
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Until the late 20th century, Western approaches to mental well-being focused mainly on treatments directly affecting brain function (via surgery, electric shock or pharmaceuticals, for example) or insight-oriented psychotherapy intended to unearth the...
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The question of when we’ll be able to build a brain to act and think like us is so far off in the future in my opinion but it’s interesting to think about because it forces you to actually see what you have and to try to quantify it in a way that...
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What's the Latest Development? The population boom of the modern era--there are about seven billion people today living on the planet, up from two billion in 1920--has resulted in an aging world population. By 2025, the world will have almost 800 million...
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If the Russian multimillionaire and former online media mogul Dmitry Itskov has his way, we will be able to trade our bodies in for holograms and have computerized brains in 32 short years. At the Global Future 2045 conference in New York City, Itskov...
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What's the Latest Development? The world faces a difficult task in brining energy to poor and growing populations while mitigating the effects of climate change, which is why creating innovative and renewable energy programs must be a global priority....
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This should be interesting. If Edward Snowden is able to get access to a secure Internet connection -- and that might be a big if -- he will be taking questions from readers at The Guardian today at 11am ET/4pm BST. Snowden is a former NSA contractor...
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I was pretty disappointed to read a post from fellow Big Think blogger, Steven Mazie. The backlash has been substantial, he has already had to rehash. His post begins with a cute picture of a cat, but the post is anything but cute. Mazie makes the following...
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The Taiwanese version of the Onion (sort of) has put out a new video mocking President Obama's hypocrisy regarding NSA surveillance. The US has long criticized China for being a surveillance state and locking up its own citizens for opposing government...
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At first glance, Tito Beveridge, the charismatic founder of Tito's Handmade Vodka, appears to be an unlikely success story, possibly even a complete fluke. In the video below, Beveridge tells Big Think he didn't set out to build a big nationwide vodka...
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Professor Benjamin Ginsberg of Johns Hopkins, the nation’s leading critic of administrative bloat in higher education, has a modest proposal worthy of Jonathan Swift himself. If we’re going to have the MOOC to cut costs, why not the MOOA--massive...
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What's the Latest Development? The prevailing wisdom about toddlers' speech patterns is that it lacks the grammatical architecture used by adults, but new research suggests that children just learning to talk have already begun employing grammatical...
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Midway in the journey of our life / I came to myself in a dark wood, / for the straight way was lost: Dante Alighieri was about 35 and suffering from what we now would call a mid-life crisis, when he wrote these lines [1], the opening stanza of the Divine...
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What's the Latest Development? In scientific literature, fathers tend to get short shrift when it comes to discussing the emotional bonds formed between parents and children. But new research suggests that the father-child bond is remarkably similar...
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What's the Latest Development? While the world suffers an economic slump, why are luxury items booming? The reason may have more to do with sociology than economics. In the midst of nation-wide employment crises, the ability to demonstrate wealth, via...
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Children need exercise. Parents often worry that making time for athletics or even for just playing on the Jungle Jim is going to take away from their kids’ academic achievement. But actually, the opposite is true. There have been analyses of...
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What's the Latest Development? When we talk about someone's personality, we tend to speak of unwavering characteristics that are exhibited in all varieties of circumstance. That view of behavior, however, doesn't reflect the fact that our surrounding...
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The binding problem is when you look at what's happening in the brain, you find there's a division of labor. You have some parts of your brain that care about vision, some about hearing, some about touch. And even within a system, like vision, you...
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If you get people that are interested in 3-D printing in a room and you say, “What lies ahead?” Some people think there is going to be this maker economy. And other people will say absolutely not, mass manufacturing is here to stay. We land...
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An American prisoner is fighting for an execution: “for” not “against”. The question is whether we should allow him to commit suicide and/or receive help in doing so. In Franklin County, Ohio, a convicted rapist is undergoing life imprisonment...
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The best way to address climate change is to stop pumping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That would eventually halt the progress of climate change and eventually the planet’s biosphere would suck that CO2 out. We have targets...
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Michael Faraday was probably the greatest experimental scientist of the nineteenth century. Faraday came from a very, very poor family. His father was a blacksmith. They had 12 children. He had no education. And early on in his life Faraday...
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One of the most wonderful things about Proust is he is a details person. He recognizes levels of sensitivity that most of us may register, but we don’t give any time to. Proust’s novel opens up with the description of someone falling asleep. ...
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