I don’t write fiction, at all. I can’t make stuff up. But I used to read more fiction than I do now. And occasionally I wonder why I’ve struggled to […]
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My brother Erik Nisbet, a professor of communication at The Ohio State University, will be giving a free webinar today on climate change communication, sponsored by the Changing Climate project […]
With state and local governments still suffering from a persistent deficit of tax revenues due to the moribund economic recovery, smart politicians are looking ahead and lobbying for spaceport development […]
Return on Investment. The three words that anyone working in the digital marketing industry dreads hearing. It usually comes right after the pitch, after a slight furrowing of the brow […]
I’ve long argued that there’s a natural alliance betweenatheism and feminism, for the same reason that there’s a natural alliance between atheism and GLBT activism: because we all understand what […]
This week, the first orders of the $25 Raspberry Pi computer began shipping. Its designers expect a plethora of new technology as a result—and a new generation of programmers.
“Too much experience…may restrict creativity because you know so well how things should be done that you are unable to escape to come up with new ideas.”
I can still vividly remember reading, back in 2001, the New York Times Magazinewrite-up on the release of The Corrections. It began: Some days, Jonathan Franzen wrote in the dark. […]
One year ago I wrote an article for Big Think with the title walking across campus whilst sitting on your couch in which I introduced my readers to the AnyBot, […]
Without feeling like the victim of my own lust, I experienced freedom for the first time in my life.
Critics of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to ban the sale of soft drinks over 16 ounces in convenience stores, movie theaters and street carts are having a […]
What’s the Big Idea? Peggielene Bartels was an administrative assistant in Washington D.C. when she got a phone call informing her she’d been elected King of Otuam, the Ghanian fishing […]
Facing deep budget cuts in 2013, the space agency is casting a wider net when it comes to getting new ideas. So if you have a novel thought on getting to Mars cheaply, speak up.
“My earliest memory is of anxiety!” cartoonist Daniel Clowes tells an interviewer in The Art of Daniel Clowes: Modern Cartoonist, the first serious monograph of the work of this seriously […]
The reassuring point of Jonah Lehrer’s new book is that neuroscientific research into the human imagination will enable us to engineer environments that foster the creativity that is every human’s birthright, rather than extinguishing it.
What is the Big Idea? A new ad released by Rick Santorum’s campaign team inserted President Obama’s face for a split-second into a montage about Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The […]
Students at a small, liberal-arts college complained to Mitt Romney about borrowing money to pursue a college major that doesn’t lead to a job. He replied, sensibly, that some majors have […]
Art news always offers wonderful confluences that stir the imagination. The wonderful news that Paul Cézanne’s The Boy in the Red Waistcoat (detail shown above), which had been stolen by […]
I usually write optimistic posts. This is going to be a scary one. I apologize in advance. While I was in Columbus last month, I mentioned the furnace-like heat. Well, […]
What could be better than starting your morning, visiting your online haunts, and being confronted, bleary-eyed, with a picture of a blonde woman in a catsuit having her breast suckled […]
A friend recently asked me: why has public opinion on same-sex marriage “evolved,” in Obama’s coinage, while public opinion on abortion grinds itself deeper into a rut? It’s an interesting […]
Google is not the only company working on augmented reality glasses. In fact, there are six products available for purchase, ranging from skiing goggles to manufacturing applications.
Tribalism is pervasive, and it controls a lot of our behavior, readily overriding reason.
Here’s a quite engaging and very sensible interview with Bennett Foddy on the possibilities for and the ethics of life extension. I would put this philosophy professor in the moderately […]
As Silicon Valley startups race to develop the next generation of sophisticated, algorithmic marketing software, it’s instructive to note the success of Thinkmodo – a viral marketing firm that films all its videos on iphones, does no market testing, and doesn’t even mention the name of the product in its campaigns.
Rather than being afraid of our new publicness, says Jarvis, we ought to use it to solve some of our most complex problems.
The most active, often eloquent, and judgmental of our ex-presidents—Jimmy Carter—explains why he would be comfortable with President Mitt Romney: “I’d rather have a Democrat but I would be comfortable,” […]
I got a call from a friend last year. He had prostate cancer and wanted some help thinking through what to do. He had gone to his doctors for the […]
In response to a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post, the loudest and nastiest of which came from people who deny climate change, I have revised the essay to […]
Do you remember the scene in the The Breakfast Club in which Brian, the lovable geek played by Anthony Michael Hall, is asked what he would need a fake I.D. […]