bigthinkeditor

“All anybody is asking is that the rich pay more in taxes—in effect, that they reinvest in society by a little more than they do now.” Jonathan Cohn urges a fair tax code.

The controversial American charity organization Project Prevention offers cash payments to drug addicts and alcoholics who are willing to forgo having children.

“Religious chauvinism flourishes along with bigotry when ignorance reigns: The less you know about other people’s religions, the more blithely you may assert the superiority of your own.”

There is a 50 per cent chance that time will end within the next 3.7 billion years, according to a new model of the universe put forward by physicists at U.C. Berkeley.

“Closing the loophole that encourages foreigners to come to the United States to make their future children U.S. citizens would not address the larger question of birthright citizenship.”

Venture capitalist and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel is offering a unique ‘scholarship’: $100,000 for entrepreneurs under the age of twenty to drop out of college.

“High on hope, supporters heralded Obama as the new FDR. Two years later, many feel disillusioned. But FDR’s actual record puts today’s gripes about Obama into perspective.”

To encourage more ecological decision-making at the check-out, recent behavioral studies say governments and businesses should apply peer pressure to consumers.

Both in the U.S. and abroad, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle toward equality between genders. Yet now, in certain key power areas women are outpacing and outperforming […]

“In a rotten economy, when people put the intellectual emphasis on utility, how does one persuade universities to keep humanities alive?”

“Anti-tobacco crusader Joe Califano on how cigarette culture has changed since the days of Don Draper.” The Atlantic tells how the government changed positions on tobacco.

“The way diseases of the psyche are diagnosed is changing rapidly. Doctors are struggling to keep up.” The Economist on the vagueness mental illness diagnoses.

“Psychologist believes seeing images of skinny performers affects the way women and girls eat.” The Independent reports on a call for warning labels on TV programs.

“Though the quality of Chile’s wines has risen dramatically recently, the world, by and large, still regards them as bottom-rung, at least in terms of price.”

“We can end the political stalemate if we summon the courage to end illegal immigration, provide amnesty at a price, and be more selective about who we welcome into the country.”

‘Humor is the great thing,’ wrote Mark Twain.’The saving thing.’ The irreverent satirist blazed a wayward path that happiness gurus should not ignore.

“Economics was founded by moral philosophers, and links between the two disciplines remain strong. So why won’t economists make judgments on the gap between rich and poor?”

An exposition this week in Paris offered a glimpse of what to expect from photography in the future. The Telegraph profiles Canon’s latest concept technology.

“Even as they become more connected, young people are caring less about others.” The youth’s ability to exhibit an emotional response to another’s distress is in decline.

Former Big Think guest Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, has died of cancer at the age of 85, according to the New York Times. The newspaper describes him […]

“Military outlays should reflect the threats facing America, not America’s economic wealth.” The National Interest says our military spending should be scaled back.

“In response to China’s dominance in rare-earths production, researchers are developing new materials that could either replace rare-earth minerals or decrease the need for them.”

The subject of buzz has generated a burst of scientific attention. When choosing products to buy, research demonstrates that we’re much less autonomous than we imagine.

“Raw chocolate—the unrefined fruit of the cacao tree, without added sugar, milk or vegetable fat—is nutritionally superior to even the highest quality dark chocolate.”

“Why do powerful people with so much to lose push so hard to squeeze out a little more gain for themselves?” Psychologists say power can make people blind to their own actions.

“The more ‘harmony’ is celebrated, the more chaos and antagonism there is in reality.” Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek says China is more unstable than we realize.

French technology may bring joy to the heart of many urban drivers: the city of Toulouse is testing a system that displays available parking spots on your mobile phone.

“The invasion of privacy—of others’ privacy but also our own, as we turn our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means—has been democratized.”

“Film has the potential to be a most beautiful art, but it has been debased by U.S. cinema, and by television.” British film director Ken Loach has a plan to save the movies.

Men and women make think similarly about sex: “New data is undermining the evidence that has long been proposed to support the eager males—choosy females paradigm.”