bigthinkeditor

Defense Secretary Gates bluntly told an audience of West Point cadets on Friday that it would be unwise for the United States to ever fight another war like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Starting your own business often means going it alone on health insurance—a risky prospect for any individual, let alone a family. Reform will encourage entrepreneurs, says Ezra Klein.

A new study from the University of California has found that younger Internet users become more socially engaged in the real world, not just online, thanks to their use of social media.

Lawrence Principe of Johns Hopkins University wants to rehabilitate alchemy. He believes that most alchemists were respectable knowledge seekers working with well constructed theories.

The security afforded by having a government job is worth approximately a pay increase of 15%, says Art Carden. This should inform the debate over collective bargaining in Madison.

This Big Think special series looks at what taste actually is—from both a scientific and sociological perspective—and why it is that we find some tastes so appealing and others disgusting.

Are people naturally good or evil? How much of our mental life is unconscious? Are our desires hard-wired by evolution? On the evening of Monday, March 21st, renowned psychologist and […]

Two high-ranking ministers made headlines this week by falling out of line with the governments they represent. They are U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and Libya’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ali Ojli. 

When combat veterans tell their battle tales, the stories often are laced with themes of heroism, sacrifice and loyalty. But guilt also takes a heavy mental toll.

‘Will Egypt’s revolution spark a Domino Effect?’. Almost anywhere one looks for analysis of events, a metaphor stares back. But metaphors are no substitute for the generation of ideas.

Under pressure to improve its search results, Google has announced a “big algorithmic improvement” that, unlike other changes, could be noticeable to its users.

The ultradense core of an exploded star contains superfluids, a strange form of superconducting matter which exhibits remarkable properties such as climbing upwards.

Except for the fear of cancer, U.S. adults most fear getting Alzheimer’s disease, but few make preparations for the onset of the disease, a survey indicates.

Scientists in the United States have found newborn mice can re-grow their own hearts. There’s no reason to believe that the same window would not exist in the human heart.

Sailors used to struggle with it but migratory sea turtles have now proved capable of sensing longitude, using almost imperceptible gradients in Earth’s magnetic field.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war.

The question raised by the wave of protests spreading across the Middle East is not whether to deal with autocrats, but how to deal with them.

Twitter and Facebook may be the civil uprising tools du jour, but they certainly weren’t the first. Photography galvanized support for the African American Civil Rights movement.

The problems facing the United States, from national debt to foreign policy, may be the result of having too many elections, according to economist Dambisa Moyo.

By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them not yet recorded—may disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge.

It’s true that Facebook and Twitter have led many away from blogging because they are so fast and easy to use, but they have also both helped to reinforce blogging in many ways.

Conservative candidates are more attractive physically than their liberal counterparts, according to a new study. This trend could benefit right-leaning candidates at the ballot box.

Squatting empty buildings is not a criminal offence. It is, in fact, an ancient right, a tradition that can be traced back over centuries of popular dissent and pragmatism.

Tattooed teachers make students more motivated and more creative, not to mention stand a better chance of getting a positive recommendation from her pupils.

Trees brighten city streets and delight nature-starved urbanites. Now scientists are learning that they also play a crucial role in the green infrastructure of America’s cities.

Over the last month, we’ve seen that social media can be a powerful tool in assisting revolutions in countries. But can those media be useful in empowering corporate revolutions?

With the emergence of new tools that can measure a person’s biological state, computer interfaces are starting to take users’ feelings into account, helping the user to focus.

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is struggling to maintain his authority in the country as vast swathes of territory in the east now appear to be under the control of pro-democracy protesters.

Why do virtually all men over the age of 90 develop some amount of prostate cancer whereas heart cancer is practically unheard of?