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A cache of René Magritte’s personal letters are set to be auctioned soon at Sotheby’s, reports the Economist; the French surrealist was “unremittingly cheery” in his correspondence.
After three men who each believed he was Jesus Christ were made to live together as a psychological experiment, psychologists better understand the nature and limits of identity.
Do the similarities between the Black Panthers of the ’60s and today’s TEA Party run deeper than guns, anger and demand for limited government?
“English has been a language of occupiers and imperialists, but also one of insurgents and democrats,” writes Isaac Chotiner. The New Yorker discusses the new lingua franca.
“China, Russia and the U.S., as permanent members of the security council, are holding themselves above the law,” says Amnesty International in a new report.
Three years ago, five-time Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter had a pulmonary embolism that threatened her life. She recounts her time in the ER as an incredibly frightening experience, and […]
Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, stopped by the Big Think offices this afternoon to talk to us about his new book “Cognitive […]
Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler for the New York Times, announced today that he is putting down his pen. In his column, he talks about what he’s learned over the past […]
With the popularity of the Internet and self-publishing, Garrison Keillor laments the end of the glamorous age of publishing from a rooftop in Tribeca.
The strange behavior of two suppermassive black holes may change the way scientists understand the evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
Robert Fisk thinks that political speak has taken over journalism and that accuracy of fact has become dominated by competing historical narratives that favor power over truth.
The Australian anthropologist Sarah Thornton has completed a study of the art world and traced its hierarchies and status-seekers just as she did the London party scene.
The incomprehensibility of quantum physics is responsible for the rise of postmodern social theories which reject the notion of a stable, immutable truth.
Mark Twain asked that his biography not be published until 100 years after his death. “He was certainly a man who knew how to make people want to buy a book,” says its publisher.
The good news is Americans are living longer than ever; the bad news is this increases the chances of getting Alzheimer’s, and no preventative treatment has proven successful.
Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg says Germany would do better to leave the Euro currency than impose domestic market reforms like bans on short-selling and speculation.
Naturally occurring bacteria, which are the only real solution to the Gulf oil spill, are much more effective than any lab-grown microbe—further proof that man cannot best mother nature.
Without disputing the immorality of Confederate slavery, the role it played in igniting the Civil War remains debatable among historians a century and half since Appomattox.
“We may not have free will, but we have ‘free wont’, which is as good as saying we’re not totally deterministic. So far so good,” writes Dr. David Rock.
Should the next generation learn Chinese? “Despite China’s rise, Chinese isn’t the world language of the future; the writing system simply makes it far too hard,” says Robert Green.
“Overuse injuries, overtraining and burnout among child and adolescent athletes are a growing problem in the United States,” says pediatrician Dr. Joel S. Brenner.
“Dubbed the ‘best-known Muslim in all of Europe,’ a ‘Muslim Martin Luther,’ and ‘the prophet of a new Euro-Islam'”, Tariq Ramadan is a Muslim reformist worth considering.
Though nearly every university has a women’s studies department, the lack of men’s studies in a time of declining male performance is an issue some professors are confronting.
What moves the world and its institutions are highly changeable emotions of groups of individuals, not rational decision making, says author and sociologist John Casti.
West Philadelphia high school has entered two cars into the X-Prize competition which requires production-ready models that get over 100 miles per gallon.
Once a darling of the left, Christopher Hitchens turned to support neo-conservative foreign policy and has written a new memoir about his political evolution.
Historical perversions and obfuscating euphemisms have the support of the Texas school book board which is seeking to tell an especially politicized version of history.
Adding nanoparticles to water increase its thermal conductivity, or its ability to take heat away from something, which could save the world a significant amount of electricity.
How can scientists be religious? How has religion evolved, according to science? In a special series this week, Big Think rounds up a learned cast of thought leaders—from a computer […]
The words “packet switching” don’t mean much to many people. But for Leonard Kleinrock, UCLA Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, packet switching is what ultimately gave him the title, “Father […]