bigthinkeditor

Sharon Lerner at The Nation appreciates Mother’s Day but laments the illusion that women’s generosity is infinite; generosity without support—real support—is unsustainable.

The “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K. is likely to change because Britain has less than ever to offer America as David Cameron seeks to be a domestic policy Prime Minister.

“Rigor leads to rigor mortis,” says MIT’s Sanjoy Mahajan who teaches his students to use common sense and best guessing to arrive at practical solutions problems great and small.

The answer to religious extremism cannot be secularism because familial and cultural roots run too deep in the Middle East, writes Rima Merhi. A more inclusive religious education is needed.

Raymond Carver was deeply bothered by the fame his stories brought him because his editor, Gordon Lish, had written such dramatic improvements to them.

Orion Magazine tells the strange story of how bottlenose dolphins passed through Cold War brain experiments and LSD doses to fascinate and entertain humans.

Gail Collins writes that although the science of birth control has advanced marvelously, America’s ability to have a reasonable conversation about contraception is lagging.

Privacy concerns aside, the millions of dollars needed to maintain surveillance cameras would be better spent on beat cops, writes Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune.

“When people wash their hands immediately after making a decision, they are less likely to rationalize its merits—possibly making them less content with the decision.”

Northrop Grumman is testing a high-powered, lightweight laser that can be used by U.S. soldiers in combat settings. Use of lasers on the battlefield could change warfare significantly.

By creating the first theoretical model of a wormhole 75 years ago, Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen allowed science-fiction writers to consider the idea of time travel, writes Dave Goldberg.

Scientists have found that the brains of problem gamblers react more intensely to “near misses” than those of casual gamblers—possibly spurring them on to play more.

A German animal biologist Silvia Gaus says we should be killing the oil-soaked birds in the Gulf of Mexico. Doing so would be less painful in the long run than trying to clean them, she says.

If computerized trading is found to have accelerated yesterday’s trading carnage on Wall Street, it may spark demand for tighter regulation of high-speed trading.

Abou Farman writes about the art of the “Persian dub” in movies of the 1970’s where Western movies would get creative embellishments in dubbed translation.

Scientists have sequenced the Neanderthal genome, discovering it to be practically identical to that of humans. In fact, most humans can probably trace some of their DNA to Neanderthals.

Denialism about the nature of the AIDS virus is estimated to have killed many thousands of people. Should scientists should be held accountable?

Bruce Usher writes that China is thus far ahead of the U.S. in developing clean technology. But with swift action America can still win.

As a child, Dr. Michael Wigler was fascinated by the personality of a friend’s brother, “a very bright kid” who “never looked you in the face, constantly was throwing his […]

Paul Farmer and Partners in Health “have shown the world that it is possible to control diseases and to redress some of the underlying causes that have turned them into pandemics.”

Researchers are attempting to “define a second genetic code: one that predicts how segments of messenger RNA transcribed from a given gene can be mixed and matched.”

Brendan Kiley looks at the history, meaning, and practice of suicide. “For most people, the subject is so taboo it’s hard to deal with—even among people who deal with suicide for a living.”

Walt Mossberg provides a basic explanation of what cloud computing is, and what it might mean for us in the near future.

“By 2050, almost 70 percent of the world’s estimated 10 billion inhabitants—or more than the number of people living today—will be part of massive urban networks.”

If a desperate, last-ditch attempt to cap the Deepwater Horizon wellhead fails, environmental damage to the Gulf of Mexico may profoundly and permanently alter the area.

Emily Bazelon writes that a citizen charged with a crime needs to be read their Miranda rights—even if they are charged with an act of terrorism.

Some winemakers and enthusiasts believe that wine tastes better on so-called “fruit” days—those days in the lunar calendar when water and saps rise.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life,” writes Paul Bloom. “Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”

Greece has plunged the euro into its worst crisis ever, and if economists are unable to bring discipline to the country there will be much more at stake than the fate of the currency.

The idea that our planet’s climate is changing is nothing new, says environmentalist and writer Bill McKibbon—in fact, the first person to theorize that our planet was warming was a […]