bigthinkeditor

“It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.”

A new paper in the Journal of Neuroscience claims that the relatively simple optical illusion pictured here can reflect brain alpha waves. 

Now a few years into Peter Thiel’s experiment, 60 fellows have received $100,000 grants to skip college for two years. We’re now starting to see some of the results come in.

Images from NOAA’s decommissioned GOES-12 satellite that provided “eye in the sky” monitoring of weather events since 2003 have been assembled in the video below.

Always paddle back out, because it is the only way you’ll ever get that next wave.

Many on Twitter say Manning deserved worse. Others are suggesting that President Obama should pardon Manning at the end of his term.  

There is nothing more mind-numbing than reading in someone’s bio or profile a list of things they are “passionate” about, in a sentence that goes: “I am passionate about x, […]

Amazon.com may have been down in North America for as long as 45 minutes this week. 

Meet e-David (Drawing Apparatus for Vivid Image Display), a robot who is programmed to copy works of art.

41 images were stitched together to create this sped-up movie that shows Phobos, the larger of the two Martian moons, passing Deimos, the smaller one. 

Once you get past all of the screaming teenagers in this video, you will actually hear some inspiring words from Ashton Kutcher. That’s right.

The Magellanic Stream, which extends almost halfway around the Milky Way, is only detectable at radio wavelengths, and made visible in the wonderful composite image above.

Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 was not a giant comet, but if you did the math – which astronomers did at the time – you would know just what a catastrophic impact it would have.  

How culpable is the U.S.? Should aid be cut off?

Thought experiment: can we communicate across species in a way that might facilitate a greater deeper relationship between us? Experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats gave it a shot.

Facing up to 90 years of jail time for leaking classified documents, Bradley Manning apologized during the sentencing phase of his trial. 

Do you know what a “tiger mom” is? Does the phrase “the tipping point” immediately bring Malcolm Gladwell to mind? “Idea entrepreneurs,” argues John Butman, are a new and influential breed, driven primarily by passion for an idea and the desire to spread it.

“Not only can small groups of people change the world, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

According to a study published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, a disproportionate number of family killings happened in the month of August, and more than half on weekends.

This video, commissioned by WWF Germany, will make you think twice about throwing away an apple. 

You may not make it to space in this life, but your ashes could be sent there after you die. 

Would an astronaut who falls into a black hole be “stretched like spaghetti” or flash-fried by a firewall of energy? The answer to this question has great significance.   

According to a meta-analysis published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review, there is a “reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity” in 53 out of 63 studies.

At NASA the waste management engineers are incredibly important to the entire mission, says Mary Roach.

Elon Musk released the conceptual design for his Hyperloop passenger transport capsule.

At Less Wrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky challenges the common assumption that automation is the cause of long-term unemployment. 

According to NASA estimates, up to 60 meteors per hour might be seen at the peak of the Perseid meteor shower on August 12. 

In a previous post, we set American Walt Whitman against Frenchman Arthur Rimbaud. Based on your feedback, Rimbaud won the first set narrowly. So now on to set #2: war.

Who will win this death match?

Bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe argues that the Singularity envisioned by Ray Kurzweil isn’t quite right.